Night Goes On
by purple-drake
Summary: COMPLETE Nightmares are the stuff of fear. They consume you, playing on your regrets and your grief. For Rodney McKay, nightmares are terrible. For Peter Grodin, nightmares are real… Grodin centric, season 2 AU from after 'Trinity' onwards.
1. Teaser: Night Whispers

"_I'm sorry."_

_Peter's voice crackled over the radio and he almost laughed. _Sorry? Sorry for what – being stuck on the satellite, not being able to stop the Wraith, _dying –_

Oh, God. _"Get us back to that satellite!" he ordered desperately, turning to pin Miller with a stern gaze to make sure he did so, because they couldn't leave Peter there, they couldn't! Lights flashed in the corner of his vision as Miller bent to the controls, hands flicking hurriedly over the illuminated crystals._

_He turned back to the viewscreen, thumb tapping in the air as though unable to wait until he could punch in the buttons to open the hatch. He opened his mouth to comfort Peter, tell him they'd be there, that he'd be fine –_

_Blue sprays of light streaked through the nothingness of space from the ominous ships looming nearby, cutting through the weapons platform in dazzles of sparks. The bristles of the satellite's turrets crumbled, breaking apart in wreathes of light and metal before it exploded –_ with a shock he awoke, his heart pounding in his ribs and his hands clutching at the covers of his bed, screwing the sheets up in clenched fists that were white and shaking. For a moment he forgot where he was, his panicked breath hot on his sweat-damp pillow, before he remembered that he was safe in his room on Atlantis.

_Oh, God…_ he still felt like crying, his throat clogged with an obstruction he couldn't swallow through. His limbs went weak as he realized he was safe, but – _how can I ever feel okay being safe, after – after –_

"_Rodney!"_ His headset fizzed with Radek's familiar voice and Rodney McKay's hand flew automatically to the round earpiece to answer, casting the nightmare – the _memory_ – from his mind.

He had work to do.


	2. Out of the Frying Pan

**A/N:** _Okies, this story is – unfortunately – AU. I wasn't happy with some of the events at the end of season 1, so I decided to 'fix' it. Spoiler-wise, all of season 1 is a possibility, with definite ones for 'the Siege' – all parts – and 'Trinity'. There're also some general season 2 spoilers, mostly in terms of character appearances. No pairings._

_Couple of disclaimers: Firstly, I don't own anyone, 'cept for names and characters that don't appear in the show, and similarities between this and any other fanfiction are coincidental. Secondly, the name for Sgt Canada belongs to NenyaVilyaNenya; she was kind enough to let me use it.  
_

_Anyway! The teaser took us off from between the first present day siege of Atlantis and the impending next one, and that's the timeline this chapter continues with._

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** I **

**OUT OF THE FRYING PAN…**

Movement.

A hand spasmed across the hard floor, splaying palm-down on the sandy surface beside a tanned face as Peter's eyes flickered open. Blearily he gazed past it towards the entwined pillars on the opposite wall, tiny round lights dimly illuminating the blue-toned chamber. Murmurs wisped in his ears, whispers in hissing voices that he couldn't make out, accompanied by the surreal sound of hurried boots.

His brow furrowed momentarily, his breath stirring up the dirt on the floor as he realized he didn't recognise his surroundings – or more importantly, recognised the architecture for what it was.

_Wraith._ He jerked with a surge of adrenaline to his elbows, his heart suddenly thundering in his chest as his breath caught fearfully in his throat. The too-quick movement made his head pound, dizziness and nausea sweeping momentarily over him, and Peter took a deep breath, closing his eyes as his belly scraped against the chilly floor. The cold seeped through the fabric of his red jumpsuit and made a shiver crawl down his back, his fingers clenching momentarily on the ground as he sat up. Weak light gleamed over his smooth features and dark hair as his hand brushed automatically at his cheek, where he could still feel the sand pressing into his skin.

_Rodney, Miller…_ the nausea didn't abate, not at all helped by the fact he hadn't eaten in far too long, and he swallowed, leaning over his knees until it passed. _God, what happened?_ He closed his eyes and patched together the fragments of images floating in his memory, ignoring the sight of freedom into a mist-wreathed corridor just ahead, beyond a fragile-looking spider web lattice of thin metal.

_He wanted to come back for me._ Yes, that was it. Rodney had wanted to come back for him… and probably would have gotten all of them killed. _But I'm not dead._ The obviousness of that comment made him chuckle, imagining what Rodney's reply would be before a throb seared behind his eyes. He pressed the heel of one palm to his forehead as though it would erase the ache behind it, gritting his teeth against the pain. _The culling beam._

The damned bastards transported him aboard one of their cruisers. _And then…_ he remembered being knocked around in his cell for what seemed like an eternity, a blessed eternity, even though his head pounded under the force of a thousand angry telepathic whispers. Because it meant that Atlantis was battling. It meant the city still lived. Who else would the Wraith be fighting?

_And then we left. We left, but the Wraith couldn't have won… they'd have taken Atlantis if they could._ He clutched onto the thought with all his might, knowing that if Atlantis had self-destructed there would be nothing for the Wraith to take.

After that… after sitting grief-stricken and terrified for his friends in the cell for an interminable amount of time… they'd come out of hyperspace. And he'd been moved from the cruiser to the cell of a hiveship, knowing all the while what his ultimate fate would be. _First they'll find out what they can about Earth. And then they'll feed._

_Oh, dear._ He worked to take deep, shaky breaths, struggling to still his heart as panic clenched a heavy fist around it. He could accept death – _had_ accepted death, _waited_ for it even, in the satellite – but to be fed upon, eaten… _There's still a chance. I don't know what it is, but there is one. As long as I'm alive, there is one._

He counted to ten, hands balled into trembling fists that rested on his legs, and the next lungful of air he took was calmer. _Don't worry about where you are. Think about what you know. You're on a Wraith ship. You know they're not at Atlantis. You're in a cell, which means they may want you for more than just feeding purposes… _Slowly, slowly, the terror eased in the face of his logical, steady litany. As long as he knew what was happening, he could keep it at bay; it was when he _didn't_ know things that he became perturbed. And he knew very well what his likely doom would be – just like he'd thought he'd known on the satellite and been able to accept it.

He swallowed through the lump still clogging his throat, the adrenaline beginning to fade and leaving him feeling weak – that is until heavy footsteps sounded from down the arched corridor. Peter's eyes snapped open and his head jerked up in time to see a Wraith turning the distant corner, framed against the cylindrical yellow lights on a stasis capsule as mist swirled around his ankles and his long coat billowed with the movement. He tracked the fog down the hall, passing beneath the circular arches enmeshed into organic-seeming walls and the twisted pillars stretching from ceiling to floor, covered in something akin to cobwebs.

Automatically Peter scrambled to his feet, wiping the grime off his hands onto his bright clothes. His fingers tingled with ready tension, his eyes widened at the sight of the Wraith bearing down on him with the sinister purpose of a superior being. The Wraith's long white hair was lit up in the dim light, the twin braids of his beard bobbing with each step. His teeth were bared in an eternal leer set within a translucently pale face, aside from the twin, shadowed ducts that arrowed outwards on either side of his nose. Two of the burly militia marched behind him, the light flickering over the bone-like masks which obscured their faces. To their armoured chests they each clutched a streamlined Wraith stunner rifle, the cartilage which was embedded into the skin of their knuckles framed by the power modules in the dull, bronze-coloured weapons.

The lead Wraith stepped up to the web-like door and it opened, the fibres folding into each other and withdrawing into the glowing, transparent membrane of the wall as the Wraith cast a leering eye over Peter. Before he could stop himself the physicist took an involuntary step back, fingers twitching with terrified reflex. _Don't. There is always a controllable part of every situation. You can't change your fate. You can decide how you accept it._ He remembered back to the satellite, to that near-consuming fear when he'd realized that the hatch wouldn't open, struggling desperately to find a way around it… before realizing there was no other way, and that there was only one thing he could do – one thing he could _control_ –

He set his jaw grimly, glaring with shaky defiance at the alien.

The Wraith cocked his head, wisps of hair trailing down the black leather of his overcoat as his grin widened. "You are Atlantean," he stated with a guttural hiss, his sunken eyes fixed upon Peter.

"I – don't know what you're talking about," Peter managed to answer through a suddenly dry mouth, his toned voice sounding almost as smooth as it ever had, showing nothing but his trademark composure. The Wraith growled and took several steps, suddenly right in the human's face. A startled grunt escaped Peter's lips as he instinctively jerked back to escape the Wraith's unpleasantly musk-like smell and the intensity of his stare, catching himself on the wall; but he was unable to tear himself away from the Wraith's unblinking, skull-like visage. _Don't let me tell him anything!_

"Atlantean," the Wraith hissed, the sound resonating in the air, scrambling Peter's thoughts until all he could hear was the single word vibrating over and over in his mind. His skin prickled with goosebumps, his teeth gritting against the weight crushing down on his pounding head, making it difficult to breathe under its force.

His brow drew together in effort, teeth clamped down on the word which forced its way out of him despite his best efforts. "Yes."

"You have Atlantean knowledge." The Wraith's cat-like eyes raked his pale face, gleaming with predatory satisfaction.

_Atlantis isn't destroyed!_ The flash of insight hit him like a blow, the force of the Wraith's reverberating whisper intensifying to the point that he couldn't even breathe for several heartbeats, the burden of all his technological knowledge suddenly constricting his chest painfully in the form of panicked desperation.

_No._ He responded to the whispers crashing around him, fixing the images of his friends in his mind – Rodney and Radek, Bates, Carson, Elizabeth – _I will not betray them. If they don't know then they can't make me… _His face was twisted against the press of voices, teeth gritted even as his eyes were held by the expectant, grinning face of the Wraith, shaking in effort.

Slowly the Wraith's expression faded, relaxing into wary disbelief and then angry frustration. "Defiance!" With a guttural snarl he thrust his hand forward, catching the scientist harshly in the chest with his open palm. The force threw Peter back against the wall once again, sharp edges of rock and metal jabbing into his back as the Wraith's claws dug through his jumpsuit and blue shirt into his flesh, scraping bloody tracks in his skin. Pain stabbed through his chest and reached for his heart, sucking the breath out of him in a wrench of burning muscles and a choked gasp. His hands tingled, limbs throbbing, the hand a flame that spread over his body, making him struggle for air and sending his thoughts into a whirl of scattered, revealing images.

In less than a moment the Wraith yanked his hand away with a triumphant hiss and Peter's shaking legs collapsed on him, allowing him to take in huge, ragged breaths as he shuddered, the bloody wound aching with sharp twinges. His numb hands clenched on the sand as he stared at the ground, eyes wide in a shocked, sweaty face. _Just breathe._ He told himself, his heart pounding somewhere in his ribs and his mind a racing babble of ideas that he couldn't hope to decipher. _Just…_ he centred on that one thing, rising above his cluttered thoughts until one hit him with guarded, bittersweet relief. _He didn't feed for very long._

"Bring him," The Wraith's sibilant voice sounded overhead and Peter flinched, the feeling flooding back into his fingers with a prickle carried upon pure adrenaline. His head jerked up to find the Wraith looking down on him with superciliously half-closed eyes, hand flexing slowly in the air. His grin widened upon seeing Peter's wild, desperate expression, revealing pointed teeth before finishing his sentence. "To the Keeper."

_That would be why._ Peter swallowed shakily, his heart-rate finally slowing down to something more comfortable as the guards moved forward to take him, their boots crunching on the sand. He scrambled to his feet before they could touch him, sparing himself the indignity of being dragged – and the feel of their cold, clammy hands.

The Wraith sneered and turned on his heel, exiting the cell with a swirl of his buttoned overcoat. Casting a tense glance at each of the burly guards as they flanked him, Peter took a deep breath and followed on unsteady legs. The lattice contracted once again with a swoosh, cutting them off from the cell; but rather than being comforting, it made a sense of impending doom work its way into Peter's mind, his arms prickling with frightened goosebumps as a sick tremor ran down his spine. He knew what had happened at Colonel Sumner's interrogation. He knew Sheppard wasn't here to gift him with an alternative end. _God help me._

The Wraith whispers seemed to intensify, the chilly mist swirling around his legs and seeping into his skin until his tan had paled to ashy grey and a shiver not entirely borne of the fog had set into his bones. The footsteps that had seemed distant from the isolated cell were now much closer and his nerves jumped every time one echoed especially near. Then as they rounded a corner into a mainstream corridor he came face-to-face with a scarred Wraith who towered over him, one eye blinded by a thick, twisted wound long-since healed. Peter flinched back in surprise, making the handprint on his chest ache as his heart struck up another mantra on his ribs, but the Wraith just snarled at him and stalked past, stained hair whipping in the air.

Peter's wide eyes followed him, shoulders prickling with expectation of an attack, before a hard shove reminded him of where he was and he stumbled forward, following the Wraith not far ahead. They coursed through the mainstream of Wraith passages, Peter's horrified gaze turning time and again to the shattered hatches of the stasis capsules, spilling their crumpled occupants in slews of brittle limbs and moist, cobwebby preservatives. It made bile rise in his throat and he found himself dimly thankful the Wraith didn't let him stop to stare, transfixed, at the constant, hideously mesmerizing sight.

When they passed one intersection Peter saw a Wraith plunge his hand into the chest of a victim as the poor woman screamed. He turned away quickly, the sound echoing in his mind as he swallowed the nausea which threatened to surpass his rattled control, but as though it had been a forerunner the shriek made him suddenly aware of the similar noises which echoed through the Wraiths' interminable whisper and he found it far too easy to imagine someone he knew at the receiving end of those Wraith hands. _Don't. Don't give in to them._

The jagged ceiling hung in too close and he had the sense of being suffocated, surrounded on all sides by enemies as they passed from the main hallway to an offshoot that apparently led to what was the Keeper's hall during the majority of the Wraiths' hibernation. The closer they got, the more it seemed like the whispers pressed in on all sides, squeezing a fist around his lungs, clenched cruelly around his body so that his mind was scattered and his breathing was too fast. _Don't. They're trying to scare you. Don't listen. Don't. The one thing you can control is you._

Abruptly the hiveship pitched violently, quaking with the distant sound of a rushing explosion. Peter was flung aside, against the clammy cobwebs of the corridor, and one of his guards staggered towards him. The Englishman's frayed nerves shattered and he instinctively threw a punch towards the guard's semi-exposed neck. Distantly he felt a rush of gratitude towards the boxing hobby he'd taken up during university, even as his knuckles scraped on the rough edge of the mask and connected with the soft tissue of the Wraith's throat.

It didn't do much, but it took the Wraith by surprise and sent him stumbling back as Peter wrenched the stunner from his grasp, ignoring the sting of the scrapes. Peter's hands fumbled with weapon, highlighted against the glowing modules as he fired point-blank into the Wraith, the crackle of blue energy thinning over the Wraith's body and dissipating into his armour even as he fell, lifeless. The other guard brought his stunner to bear as the corridor rocked with another blast, making him lurch as he fired. Peter flinched away from the spray of light that lashed through the thick air, humming into the pillars nearby, but he was steadied against the sticky wall and his shot did not miss.

_One more._ His feverish, desperate mind promised, and he swung around to find the lead Wraith balancing himself against the pitch of the ship using one of the glistening pillars, his white hair trailing down his back in a thin sheet that rippled with the tremble of the ship. The alien hissed angrily and lunged at Peter before the physicist's blast sent him cart-wheeling down the hall and into oblivion.

_Go. Go._ Peter tried to tell himself, telling him that his path was clear, that the situation had changed and he didn't have to accept death as the only answer – but still his body refused to listen for several paralysed seconds, clutching the stunner so strongly that his knuckles were white, before another explosion sent him staggering and brought him back to himself. _Idiot. Get out of here!_

He ripped desperately through his memory, searching for an image of the schematic of a hiveship they'd managed to draw using data from the first mission and the infiltration with the Genii as the whispers intensified into furious snarls around him. He heard the sound of quick footsteps approaching and fled down a nearby corridor, one he was sure wouldn't lead back to the main hallway.

_The dart bay._ He ducked automatically as he passed beneath a low-slung arch, his mind processing the images that flashed by as he tracked his position. Soon enough the weight of the stunner dragged him down, but he couldn't afford to toss it aside in the event he came across a Wraith who cared more about an escaped prisoner than the explosions that periodically shook the hiveship.

The vessel was taking enough hits that the mist seemed to engulf the hallways, smoke and sparks from the damaged systems filling the corridors and providing Peter with enough of a distraction to slip past the enraged Wraith he saw. His thoughts remained at the feverishly racing pace, but with one goal set in his mind he overrode the fear that had threatened to overcome him – for now, at least. He ignored the stitch in his side and the catch in his breath that told him he was driving his body too hard, the metallic taste of blood predominant in the back of his mouth.

_I have to reach the dart bay before they open the hangar doors._ The thought played over and over in his mind, stifling the coughs which beat at his throat, induced by the smoke and mist as he ran. His shoes scraped on the dirt as he darted around a corner, but he'd barely managed two steps before he hit something solid and frighteningly alive. Unprepared, he was flung harshly to the ground with a blow that winded him, his neck and head pounding with whiplash as the stunner slipped from his hands. _What…?_

The 'what' was answered instantly as the surprised visage of a Wraith coalesced in Peter's vision, but that expression lasted only seconds before he grinned lasciviously, dark lips stretching widely over yellowed teeth. _Oh, God –_ Peter prayed, scrambling backwards for the stunner, grazing his hands and elbows as his terrified eyes flickered from the Wraith to the weapon. His hands grasped it, clutched it, and scuffing up dust he whirled about on his back as the Wraith leapt for the rifle with a sibilant howl. Peter's fingers pumped the trigger mindlessly, blasting net after desperate net of glittering energy at the Wraith as the alien tumbled in the air and slewed across the mist-wreathed path nearby.

For a second Peter was still, aside from his heaving chest and shaking hands, before he forced his tired muscles to work and staggered to his feet, skin crawling as he scraped against the motionless Wraith. _Not far now. Go._ The corridor rumbled, the dim lights wavering in accompaniment to a distant shock, and he lurched unsteadily, but with as much speed as his exhausted body could muster, towards the nearby dart bay.

The corridor widened, spilling out into a multi-floored room held up by massive, wire-twined pillars, their tripods spreading out like thick, sturdy legs. A multitude of darts hung in rows, on thin docks extending over the central platform of each level, while the occasional walkway stretched horizontally from one side to the other. Dozens of the sharp, bone-carved vessels were already screaming around the pillars, circling like buzzards as they waited for the pilots still scrambling for their cockpits.

The shrill noise made Peter want to cringe, the sheer openness and magnitude of the hangar demanding that he look around in awe. The Wraith were too busy hurrying to their posts, too occupied with the quaking of the ship to notice a single human emerging from the smoke-choked corridor.

_Don't let me miss. _Peter took a deep, trembling breath, recalling all of Sheppard and Ford's tutorials as he raised the stunner and aimed at the nearest Wraith, only just climbing into the cockpit before a bolt of the sizzling energy catapulted him over the dart and sent him flailing and shrieking furiously down several levels, vanishing into the shadowed bowels of the hangar. Peter sprinted for the dart, tossing away the rifle as he went, where it clattered unheeded to the sandy floor. He ducked and almost fell as a dart screeched overhead, whirling up dirt and lashing Peter's skin with residual heat before he clambered into the cockpit of the anchored ship.

He slipped easily into the half-lying seat, trying desperately not to think of how much it looked like bone, or how the bleached-out, blue-toned structure felt cold and dry, the sharp points of the stubby wings and the needle-like bow reminding him very much of the darts for which the vessels were named.

The firm seat depressed beneath his weight and a darkened bubble sheeted over the cockpit, the dart humming to life in response to his mere presence, the sensation prickling his skin. _Let's hope Rodney was right._ Peter prayed with a pang of remembrance, recalling the physicist's theory that as distant evolutions of the Ancients, the Wraiths' technology would also be based partly on mental commands – because he hardly had any idea how to pilot a puddlejumper, let alone a Wraith dart.

The docking clamp disconnected with a clunk, leave the ship hovering with tiny vibrations as a rumble swept throughout the hangar. The covey of darts swooped towards the warren of rounded outlets in the thickly-twined outer wall, hundreds of burrows leading to the star-littered orbit. _Here we go._ Peter took a deep, calming breath and flexed his fingers, studying the strange, dimly-illuminated controls before cautiously placing his hands on each of the slightly concave panels that took up the console's space, separated by a ridge of bone. They immediately lit up with a yellow glow under his touch.

Splaying his fingers over the warm controls, Peter pressed down on the panels, making them bend momentarily as he focussed all of his mental pleading to the movement of the dart. He still wasn't prepared when the ship rocketed forward with a scream towards a looming wall, the force throwing him back in the seat as the less sophisticated inertial dampeners of Wraith technology struggled to compensate. A second later they kicked in and Peter's hands flashed forward to the panels, pushing frantically down on the controls as his mind shrieked – _turn, turn, TURN!_

Instantly the dart corkscrewed tightly around a thick pillar at the far end of the hangar, scraping the top of the bone-like armour with a flash of sparks and a jolt that sent Peter's heart leaping into his mouth. _I've got to get out of the hangar, or I'll end up being a smear on the wall!_

No sooner had he thought it that the dart careened towards the outer hatches, spinning out of control through the alarmingly narrow passage until he burst into the wide, star-speckled space around the hiveship. The first thing he saw was another of the ominous vessels, set against the stars twinkling in the distance. It looked heavy with thick, creeper-like designs, crossing and melding in eerily elegant curves that ultimately made the ship resemble a bleached-out, elongated skull. The shadows hung around the cambers, changing the hue until the ship was a blend of light-deprived blues and greys.

The next thing he saw was a streaking line of projectiles slewing in his direction and he flinched to the side, fingers pressed so hard to the console his arms were aching. The dart followed his unintentional, instinctive command, but had leaned only slightly away before the stream of bullets ripped through the starboard side with a shuddering jerk that tossed Peter back in the seat, the small area and the bone-like planes adding a surprising amount of cushioning.

Sparks exploded all around him and Peter gritted his teeth, his fingers jerking on the panels with the friction burning the tips of his fingers. It sent the dart into a barely-controlled spin beneath the nearest hiveship, hoping for safety around the semi-hollow, draping curves of the hull. He knew that his ship was damaged and was desperate for time and space to _think._ Who could be fighting the Wraith out in space like this?

And then he came out from under the looming hiveship to lay eyes upon the answer to his question, the most beautiful sight he'd ever encountered. She was framed against the streaking blue lights of the Wraith ships, her rail guns slewing through the vacuum and her shield lighting up with cerulean ripples at every blast. Her long bow widened to a sloping, almost turtle-like shell upon which were the communication spires vital to any ship, which was flanked by two flattened hexagonal engines thrusting forward. Peter had never seen her in the process of being built but had viewed the schematics while working with the stargate program, and there could be no doubt in his mind.

It was the _Daedalus._

An elated grin crawled tentatively over Peter's lips, his tension momentarily forgotten against the surge of pride any engineer would feel after seeing such a ship in action, before it faded just as suddenly with the undeniable truth of his position. _Radio. I need a radio._

The rail gun fired a stream of bullets in his direction, towards the hiveship fast receding behind him, and Peter pounded on the controls to bank out of the way; but the dart responded only sluggishly, the projectiles streaking close enough to rock the ship.

_Oh, dear…_ Peter's stomach lurched and he swallowed, stabbing with ignorant precision at the controls. He knew what he wanted, he just didn't know _how._ His thoughts were divided, trying to concentrate on opening a link to the _Daedalus _and avoiding destruction at the same time as his dart wheeled around a flat cruiser, the softened curves of the larger ship's stubby wings passing by in a flash while the dart tilted worryingly to the starboard. The planet rose up in his rounded, tinted viewscreen, the glow of the atmosphere dimmed by the partition, and the _Daedalus_ was just visible to the portside as another cruiser came down above it like a bird of prey.

_The culling beam!_ Peter's heart leapt to his throat, knowing that if the cruiser was allowed to get much closer they would either board or simply transport everyone off –

But then the _Daedalus's_ engines engaged, propelling them out from under the encompassing grasp of the cruiser and beneath the wire-lit underside of a massive hiveship. They streaked across Peter's viewscreen, curving away from another vessel that moved to flank them and vanishing into the wide, writhing light of a hyperspace window.

Peter didn't get time to lament the fact they left without him, because the dart's tilt turned into a dangerous veer and he scraped the stern of a nearby vessel. With an alarmed jolt Peter pressed his hands to the panels as though he could provide more power to the failing systems, but the light flickered and heat momentarily seared his palms before dying. Peter looked up with widening, horror-struck eyes at the globe which filled his vision, debris bouncing off the dart's blue-toned surface and sending him into a smoke-twirled, spiralling nose-dive towards the planet.

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Slowly Peter came aware of the blistering heat which pressed down on his shoulders, his face gritty with sand and sweat, and of the ache which had settled into his body. His muscles complained further as he levered himself up from the hard contours of the bone protecting the console, gritting his teeth against sharp pain stabbing into his head behind his temples.

He wasn't helped by the too-bright sun which seared into his eyes and he flinched away from it, one arm raised automatically against the dazzle to cast a paltry shadow over his face. The scab which had encrusted over the handprint on his chest broke with a sharp sting as he moved, but compared with the dull, constant ache of his limbs and the pounding of his head, he hardly noticed.

Distantly he heard a high rumble, but that was dismissed as he peeked over the dashboard of the dart, absently brushing off the dust which had swept up onto the crumbled nose in the crash. Ahead of him stretched endless sand and rock, rippling in the heat of the day. Peter swallowed, suddenly acutely aware of his dry mouth and of the warmth his red clothes soaked up, hammering down on him from the cloudless sky. Every breath was hot and arid, sapping his strength as his numb gaze swept the horizon until –

_What?_

In the distance, fluctuating beyond the waves of heat, he thought he saw a row of tumbledown buildings, crumbled by age and almost faded into the wasteland of the desert. For a moment he hesitated; it could have been a mirage, but if he stayed where he was he was going to die anyway. What choice did he have?

Still, he shifted in the sweat-sticky chair to his other side, hoping desperately for other options –

And was faced an impending wall of sand, roaring distantly but growing closer, writhing and shifting in an impenetrable barrier of what he knew would be certain doom.

_Sounds like a plan._ Peter decided instantly, gripping the warm sides of the dart and jumping out, shoes skidding on the pile of sand kicked up by the dart's crash-landing. The world spun around him, his vision searing white beneath his pounding head as he staggered for balance. _Don't do this. Not now._ He took a deep breath that made him choke on its very dryness and coughed, his mind anxiously cajoling him to hurry it up, because he didn't know how far away the ruins were –

Getting a grip on himself, leaning over his knees, Peter took a shallower breath to steady his swaying head before straightening and locking eyes on the ruins in the distance. _Time to go._

His shoulders prickled constantly with the presence of the great, swirling mass of dust he knew was behind him as he moved, stumbling frequently over the loose red sand and only occasionally meeting with flat plains of cracked rock. Soon it faded into nothing but a heat-shimmered blur, one he felt he'd lived his entire life, and he found himself staggering more often than not. His arms hung limply by his sides and his lungs complained, his jumpsuit clinging stickily to his back, but he was too weary to do anything but stare at the sight in the distance and put one foot in front of the next. The thought of Atlantis was but a distant dream; a city floating on an ocean can't have ever existed, because there was only sand and heat.

But that was before the sharp, slatted pieces of rock which littered the flat mesa began trembling, the ground shivering beneath the force of the storm. Peter felt the tremor beneath his feet and paused, turning about with a sick feeling in his gut – though not from the pounding of his head. The wind lashed sand in his eyes and he flinched back, raising a protective arm, but not before he caught a glimpse of a wall that encompassed the entire horizon, churning with what seemed like malicious intent.

_Run!_ His mind shrieked, but his legs agreed only reluctantly as he stumbled towards the ruins, the stitch in his side jabbing spitefully at his quick, ragged breaths. _Please let it be close,_ he begged, sticky fists clenching as he continued in his lurching sprint, dismissing the possibility that the ruins might not be real, that they might only be a mirage, because if it was true then he might as well just give up now and let the storm take him.

_Can't let Rodney and Radek think they've got the _Daedalus_ all to themselves – it'll go to their heads…_ the thought was frantic but wry, a babble of words in a part of his mind that remembered that he'd even had a life before the endless sea of sand, the constant boom of the storm behind him.

The gale lifted dust up from around him, lashing in his sweat-stained hair, getting in his clothes and mouth. He ducked his head, eyes squinting shut against the sheets which whirled around him, the familiar taste of blood once again predominant in his throat. It scoured at his skin, abrading it away with vicious stings until it began a constant throb on the flesh beneath.

And then, quite suddenly, he was staggering over crumbling bricks, weather-beaten walls rising up out of the wasteland around him as the sky darkened with the sand and howling wind.

It was difficult to breathe without inhaling dust and his body was wracked with constant coughs before he drew the ragged neck of his blue shirt over his mouth, filtering the majority of the sand as he forced his rubbery legs onward, passing by looming shadows of useless, broken buildings. One hand flailed before him, searching desperately for walls in case he ran into them, before his tender fingers scraped on hard rock. Leaning into the wind, turning his head away from the sand that bit at his scraped and raw face, he followed the sturdy barrier until he reached an opening. Without hesitation he lurched into it, out of the wind that continued to shriek through the door and pound on the semi-existing roof as dust sprinkled down from above.

Exhausted, hurting, Peter curled up in the safest corner he could find, listening to the storm battering his temporary fortress and blearily watching the sand swirling across the flagstones. All thought of the Wraith, and the _Daedalus,_ and even Atlantis was evaporated by the unending gale, replaced by his utter exhaustion, by his pulse beating loudly in his ears through the thump in his head, the strained ache of his body, his parched throat…

Peter let it all go and slept.


	3. There's More Than One Way to Run

**A/N: **_Oooh, nice reviews! That does a heart good to see such supportive feedback. Anyway, just to warn you, I've edited the first chapter again, since there was something fundamentally wrong with the way I'd written Grodin's character. All fixied! Check it out if you like._

_Enough rambling; on with the story! Oh, and we're… sort of… getting into some medical things now, so if there are any doctors who happen to read this and you see a mistake, please tell me! Hmn, come to think about it, my technological knowledge probably isn't all that hot either…_

_Shutting up now._

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** II **

**THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO RUN**

"_Oh, God…"_

_He stared with disbelief at the shattered remains of the satellite, his chest tight with dismay before clenching further with grief. _Oh, God, not Peter – not Peter –_ beside him he heard Miller sink back in his seat, shocked, as the debris coasted slowly apart on the residual wave of weapons fire, scorched metal gently turning over in the cold of space…_

Rodney drifted awake, slivers of blue peeking through the thin slits of his eyelids, and his room blurred into view around him, his cheek buried into his pillow as he lay unmoving atop the covers. For a moment he stared blearily, his vision unfocused as he watched the lifeless equipment on the low table beside the bed and the thick bronze-coloured balcony door on the opposite wall. The blue stained-glass of the door seemed dark with the night behind it while the oranges and yellows were faintly illuminated by the thin, circular crystals embedded in rows and columns in the grey, hard-lined walls, serving as lights. He could feel the open space of the veranda beyond his head, through the glass windows and the bronze strip of geometrically-designed wall which separated them.

He let out a breath that relaxed his body and levered himself up with a grunt, the grey blanket still drawn up to the pillow rumpling slightly as he shifted to sit on the side of the low-slung bed. His limbs were numbly weak as though he'd just run a marathon, his jaw aching as though it had been clenched. It was a familiar and unwelcome feeling, as was the tightness of his chest and the lump in his throat.

Elbows resting on his grey-trousered knees, Rodney rubbed his palms gently over his taut-seeming face, shoulders hunched in weary despair as he massaged his eyes. _Why?_ He wondered, his hands trembling against his skin, leaning over the dull crimson floor and gazing despairingly through his fingers at the smooth patch between his spread feet.

Why did that memory have to keep haunting him? Why _that_ one? It wasn't like he'd lost friends before – not like he hadn't _failed_ friends before… he squeezed his eyes shut against the potential tumult of memories, mouth dry as he forced them from his mind.

And yet Abram and Gaul, Dumais and Hayes hadn't stayed with him. Oh, he still remembered, still dreamed, still ran over in his mind what he should've – could've – done, but it had been months since then and now the memories were beginning to fade.

Not like Peter. Not like the vivid images that still assaulted him during his sleeping hours, the guilt that still clutched his belly after waking… during the day he could forget, pretend it hadn't happened and wasn't real, but his dreams knew the truth.

_Then why do I get the feeling I'm missing something?_ He wondered, eyes slitting open to glare at the cool floor as the chill seeped into his feet. For several seconds he pondered the thought, but as the night outside began to fade, casting faint morning sun over the thriving plants resting beneath the canopy of the terrace, he dismissed it and banished the memory. _Dreams are the product of an under-worked mind,_ he told himself sternly, patting his legs absently and lifting his head to look around his room. His eyes automatically flickered over the metal-lined boxes stacked beside the door across from him and the photos hanging on the smooth wall behind him, beside a stone-textured red column emitting light from behind its hard forms. "Yup," he grunted, already running over the work needed to be done, getting up to begin his day as he had begun all others: with the lingering niggle that there was something eluding him.

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Sand sheeted down to the worn floor as the slightly crumbly stone of the wall shifted, the sediment of ten thousand years cascading to the faded grey flagstones. The sandy-red block rasped open, scraping against its neighbours in a tinkling of powder. A clay-covered hand slipped through the thin crack and forced the brick to turn further from the wall with a grind that grazed white lines on the filthy slabs of the tumbledown chamber. Sunlight beamed through the space, sliding unevenly across the grimy floor of the corridor beyond as the opening widened to the point that it could accept a man without trouble.

Wearily Peter slumped against the thick frame, hands pressed to the cooler inside surface of the hidden door as the drying mud coating his sun-browned skin cracked and flaked to the ground. He let his eyes roam unseeingly over the debris-littered floor of the outside chamber, the sunlight illuminating the drifting specks of dirt in the warm, dry air as he caught his breath. For a moment his gaze rested on the vacant entrance, the door long since crumbled in the arid heat and scouring winds, framing the small dunes of sand leaking into the hallway beyond.

He considered returning down the passage to the oasis chamber to add to the roughly drawn clay map that he'd left drying on the outer-edge flagstones, but the thought of braving the hidden dens of the diverse creatures living there was far less appealing than that of exploring the newly discovered chamber. It was bad enough that it was the only room fit for habitation; the city seemed to have been based around the large spring, providing enough water for everyone inside – excluding whatever technology they had to aid them, of course.

Now it was the home of various creatures, mostly small and dangerous, animals that he probably wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't been forced to survive beside them. Whoever said deserts were lifeless places obviously hadn't been forced to _live_ in one; after his first exhausted night he'd awoken at the patter of frightened mouse-like paws skittering across his leg to find himself having sustained dozens of tiny insect bites at some point before morning.

The rough stone of the door had begun to warm before Peter encouraged his aching muscles to move, the heat sapping his strength even under the semi-shadow of the partly collapsed room. Absently scrubbing his grubby hands on the sun-faded jumpsuit pushed to his waist, he turned towards the darkened steps behind the wall and examined the bricked ceiling which hung uncomfortably low in the narrow space. It obscured the chamber he assumed was below, the sunlight stretching only far enough that he could see the base of the stairs, laid with a differently coloured stone.

Steadying himself against the uneven walls Peter stepped cautiously into the cooler hallway, annoyingly aware of the sun at his back that made his blue shirt cling to him damply. Though he was relatively sure there was nothing hostile down there, he'd learned that desert-dwelling creatures were almost impossible to see unless you knew what to look for.

The good thing about that was if they were camouflaged, usually they weren't poisonous. The poisonous ones could afford to flaunt themselves – they knew nothing smart would want to aggravate them. He'd nearly learned that the hard way.

His shadow blocked out the sunlight and he waited patiently for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, fleetingly wishing the wood of the scrubby, twisted bushes wasn't so dry that it'd burn to a cinder before providing any practical use as a torch. The thought led onto other ones; like the technology he lacked and wished he had, which led onto the thought of Atlantis and whether it was still there…

_Don't think like that._ He scolded himself mentally and sighed, scrubbing absently at his eyes with a bared forearm, the long sleeves of his shirt rolled to his elbows. _They're alive. _He promised himself, even though he had no way of actually knowing; he hadn't found a stargate in the ruins and he knew braving the desert to look for one would've been suicide.

Shaking himself from his fears, Peter finally moved carefully into the warming corridor, his footfalls coming back at him loudly. The air was still and bordering on stuffy, but had more of a metallic taste than anything else. It made him pause, his brow furrowing slightly in thought as he ran carefully through the reasons for it.

There weren't many things that could put that smell in the air; not a tomb, it wasn't quite right for that and the Ancients didn't go in for tombs anyway. He already knew the race in question weren't Ancients, because Ancients had a tendency to write all over the walls and the ruins lacked any evidence of that. Rodney had complained more than once that they seemed to lack for paper or some suitable writing tools, making information susceptible to the wear and tear of weather.

Perhaps a tainted water source. Or perhaps he'd even found the stargate itself... _if so, I could dial Atlantis!_ The thought spurred him onward, the rough, ziggurat-like roof receding behind him as he descended the shallow stairs. The band of red stone set amongst the grey lengthened, stretching out along the base of the wall and showing up dimly in the shadows.

He could feel the hollow echo of a long, low-ceilinged chamber as his shoe made contact with the dusty crimson panel at the foot of the stairs. Instantly there was a hum which ran around the walls and square, dull grey crystals set at intervals into the red-tinted bricks fuzzed to life with a complaining flicker in accompaniment to the coloured edging.

Peter flinched back automatically as the light seared in his dark-accustomed eyes, the heel of his scruffy boot catching on the step. The edge of the rock crumbled as his arm flashed up to shade his face, sand-scoured lines creasing over his bearded face with his wince. He staggered before catching his balance, spare hand stabbing erratically at the air.

It took a moment before his eyes adjusted and he blinked in the familiar, unobtrusive lighting that was so prevalent in Atlantis. Muted white and red illumination bathed a pair of parallel tables heaped with strange, metallic shapes, shining dimly beneath their soft blanket of dust. On the opposite wall were similar figures and draping, gauzy curtains, eerily still after ten thousand years of disuse.

_Not a stargate._ Moving with curious caution, Peter skirted a heap of devices scattered near the bolted metal leg nearest to him, the air hanging dank and heavy and the dim lighting darkening the beard which stubbled his face – a mark of how long he'd already lived there. The atmosphere was a humid change to the dry air outside, albeit slightly cooler, but Peter was hardly paying attention to the ambience as his clay-flecked fingers brushed over the edges and curves of the machinery with rising excitement. _But something nearly as good._

Almost as soon as he'd touched the device it sprang to life, giving him his second shock in as many minutes. A row of blue lights whirred in a continuous motion on the cylindrical surface, the bronze tint shining up easily beneath his contact before dying as his hand jerked back with a start. _They still have a power source after all this time, albeit not for long, and the fact that they haven't yet decayed… definitely technology influenced by the Ancients._

Which probably explained the reason why the civilisation was dead; the Wraith didn't tolerate advanced races, and though technology such as this was hardly on par with Atlantis, it was still a threat to the life-sucking aliens.

Unaware of the slight grin that tugged on the corners of his lips and the euphoric sparkle in his brown eyes, Peter worked his way down the table and along the other side, touching devices randomly with excited hands. Some remained still and dead, others lit up and faded soon after, while still others sat like glowing tokens amidst the shrouding dust, waiting to be used. The grin turned into a chuckle, Peter's gaze flickering over the litter with the look of a kid in a candy shop. It was a look that Sheppard had ascribed to all scientists whenever they found something new to play with.

But this was different. This wasn't just finding new equipment and being able to examine it in his leisure, without Rodney or – God forbid – Kavanaugh annexing it for their own purposes. This was a discovery that could get him back to Atlantis.

_It isn't quite the same as Ancient technology,_ Peter noted absentmindedly, leaning over the steel table to follow a stray wire. _And much of it seems damaged, but I may be able to jerry-rig a distress beacon out of all this… after that it would only be a matter of finding a stargate._ If there was one actually on the planet… but he didn't let himself think about that. Instead he turned around to the table beside him, inattentively brushing his dusty hands on his jumpsuit, still hanging in folds around his waist.

He didn't notice the soft click of an activating device as his fingers scraped past it, a soft green light blinking into the veil of filth as multiple legs uncurled themselves from beneath the base of a half-spherical body.

Peter's foot accidentally kicked a dented box lying in the shadow of the next table, knocking something to the flagstones with a clatter. With a sigh he knelt down to pick it up, glancing about a little ruefully at the disorder as he arranged the array of broken equipment. No laboratory of _his_ would be caught in this state.

The spider-like device lifted itself from its cradle of dust, wires so thin they were invisible feeling the air – feeling the heat signature of a being nearby. Quickly it skittered over the debris and launched itself at Peter, crouched unaware not more than a foot from the scratched edge of the table.

Something landed lightly on his back and Peter moved absently to flick it off – but he was met only with air.

That same 'something' stabbed into the flesh of his back just between his shoulder blades, making Peter grunt in pain and jerk in surprise, dropping an emaciated device for his hand to fly instinctively to the source. He gritted his teeth, the wound pounding, sending waves of pain across his shoulders accompanied by a disturbing warmth that spread over his shirt. His fingers touched something sticky, came away bloody, and Peter looked at the smudges in wary shock as the pain dulled.

His skin prickled uncomfortable with pins and needles, the point of origin reduced to an uncomfortable ache that threatened to erupt into something more. _Damn. Should have made sure there were no animals around before I went poking… bloody idiot._ He touched the fabric-covered wound again and hissed when it throbbed, pulling back to regard the blood on his hand with a frown. He needed to take care of that first, before he set to his newest task.

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The chamber still retained vestiges of its musty atmosphere, now warmed to the sunlight streaming through the open door and lit to the dull panels in and edging the walls. Dust streaked the area, strewn wherever Peter had rifled through the devices. If he got back to Atlantis, then they could worry about cleaning the room up; for the moment, he was concerned only with making something of use out of all the junk.

It was a day or two later and Peter had set up a section of the worktable for his use, scattered with various improvised tools and the devices spread around him in rumples like a little kid's toys. Seated on a short stack of dented metal crates Peter leaned over a muddle of wires, eyes fixed on his task. His roughened fingers held the cables still, one of the Athosians' lighters held gently in his hand as he soldered the wire ends together with jets of flickering orange energy emitting from the rounded end of the utensil.

His back and neck throbbed, tingles of pins and needles spreading out from the wound that had been a struggle to clean merely because of its position. It was distracting, stabbing sharply every time he moved the wrong way, and it took all of his considerable concentration to ignore the unsettling sensation of something crawling forcibly through his flesh. What worried him more, however, was that soon after he'd been bitten – at least, he assumed it was a bite of some kind, since he could hardly see it himself – his extremities developed a tendency to feel numb, making it difficult to work the delicate technology.

His grip on the wires fumbled and he dropped them to the tabletop with a slap. For a moment he gazed down at them ruefully before resting his head on the back of the hand still palming the lighter, closing his tired eyes with a sigh. He listened to the quiet hum of activated machinery vibrating unobtrusively through the chamber, bringing to mind the similar sound of Atlantis's technology, a noise heard so often in the background it was taken for granted and rarely noticed.

But he'd noticed it. On the first night shift, when he'd volunteered to watch over the city from the control room, unable to sleep for excitement, he'd listened to the soft lap of distant waves against the sprawling piers and the faint, soothing hum of charged crystals. Ever after, he always strained to hear it during the cacophony of the day and missed it when it was absent; but in darkness he was comforted by the sound, accompanied by the murmur of his team's voices, the step of a random scientist and the shift of the relentless ocean. At night, Atlantis had been his.

Now the sound was unnatural only in the fact that it was alone.

_Atlantis._ He rubbed his forehead against the faint, steady ache behind his temples borne of constant heat, dropping the lighter to brush back his lengthening hair with his palm as he looked blindly down at the scrambled wires. _I wonder what everyone's doing right now. _Automatically he turned his other wrist to look at his watch and see what time it would be on the great city, but it was long broken, the glass surface cracked and the interior mechanics filled with sand. _Rodney and Sheppard are probably arguing with Carson to escape the infirmary, _Peter considered, a smile touching his lips fleetingly. More than once Carson had asked him if he couldn't permanently tag them, just to save the irritated doctor the trouble of tracking them down himself. _Or in the lab – like Radek would be, perhaps even arguing with Kavanaugh… Doctor Weir would be in her office… Ford's probably getting the mickey taken out of him by the other marines… Bates would be in the control room or the gym, no doubt… _he built a picture of Atlantis, filled with the people he knew, his surrogate family performing their duties as only they could.

He refused to acknowledge the image of a destroyed city, even though he could see it all too clearly in his mind's eye: the towers crumbling in wreathes of smoke and sparks, the piers creaking and breaking their restraints, flames casting shadows on the water as the city fell apart and sank to the bottom in pieces…

His eyes focussed on the slim, flat tool he'd just been using, one of the last remnants of his life on Atlantis. Rodney had been dying to figure out how the strange lighters worked but Teyla flatly refused to give hers up; so Peter, partly to tease Rodney and partly out of a similar curiosity, had traded most of his leftover chocolate to an Athosian to get one of his own. He'd intended to hand it to Radek, at least, since most of his own time was focussed on the computer mainframe and not the labs, but discovered it invaluable when it came to repairing their Earth-based technology until the point came that he was loathe to give it up. When the mission to the satellite came it had been the first thing he thought of to take and the only thing that he'd been carrying on his person at the time. Now it was proving just how good the trade had been.

His melancholic reverie was broken by an unfamiliar noise sounding from outside, somewhere in the decrepit paths of the ruins, and instantly his body was charged with wary adrenaline.

The last time he'd heard unknown sounds was on the Wraith ship.

Forgoing the equipment scattered on the desktop, Peter made his way to the steps, skirting the debris littering the dusty floor to emerge tensely from the darkened room. He paused on the threshold, eyes squinted shut against the sunlight that poured through the crumbled fissures in the roof, the heat pressing down on him almost as soon as he'd come out from under the shade. After a moment's thought he set to pushing the heavy door closed, hands pressed to the rough stone and straining muscles making his wound throb. The slab scraped a little along the familiar white lines of its path, but since Peter had cleared much of the sediment it moved fairly quietly before closing entirely with a hollow boom that echoed from within and was barely heard without.

Wincing against the light ache of his head induced by the dazzling sun and the accompanying pound of the bite, flexing his numb fingers, Peter's gaze flickered over the cracks in the stone walls, seeing nothing moving in his limited sight. Carefully he stepped through the room, his footfalls softened by the sand coating the flagstones even as it was cast up in sheets behind him when he reached the thickly blanketed corridor.

Then he heard it again: a jangle, like that of leather against metal, coming from the oasis room and all but drowned out by something else.

Footsteps. Wary footsteps, muffled by sand and the softer clay of the spring's edge.

Cautiously Peter peeked around the arched doorway, ignoring the high, smoothly clay-coated dome that sheltered the sprawling, almost swamp-like oasis. The faded tints that had once probably been a magnificent fresco were chipped and cracked, allowing the sunlight to beam in dust-sparkled intervals over the water. Instead his eyes alighted on the faded wooden cart sitting near the water's edge, its wheel tracks cutting through the mud. Bags and knickknacks dangled on leather cords from the roughly hewn canopy, swaying a little from movement.

A tacked draughthorse lapped eagerly at the off-coloured water, hooves sinking into the edge as it set its thick shoulders against its weight and lipped at the surface. Its shaggy black fetlock hung low over its eyes, thick brown fur unkempt beneath the leather and metal tack. The mud squelched as it shifted its position, ignoring the wagon creaking behind it as its knotted tail flicked reflexively, resting in the thinly dappled shade of a twisted, rough-barked tree nearby.

But the horse was of less interest than the scrawny, bearded man wandering closer, boots soft on the weedy sand and then louder on the cracked flagstones set into the ground around the outer edge of the room. His dark hair hung in bunches around a thin face, thick eyebrows overshadowing narrow eyes. His grimy, sweat-and-dirt-stained clothes were of a like Peter didn't recognise, made of what was originally a cream-coloured material that wrapped around his wrists and waist, the neck gathered in a leather hem that kept it close and out of the way.

What really unnerved the scientist was the slim rod the man held loosely in one hand by a thicker handle that glowed slightly with a blue module, the pointed tip looking wicked. It reminded him of a cattle prod and somehow Peter got the feeling it wasn't just for the horse.

The man paused, shaded eyes staring curiously down at section of smooth clay, and with a sharp pang of shocked realization Peter saw it was his map of the ruins, left untouched since he'd found the junk room.

_Damn._ Nervously Peter wiped his sweaty hands on the jumpsuit tied at his waist and turned around to return to the hidden chamber, shoes kicking up dust around the hem of his clothes.

The only problem was that a thickset man with thin blonde hair was behind him, glaring at him with beady eyes set in a rugged, square-chinned face. Startled, Peter flinched back with a gasp, his heart rebounding off his ribs before he managed to get a hold of himself. _Oh, this is going to be a problem._

"Oi," the stranger rumbled loudly, making Peter wince at the aggravation to his headache. "Looks like there _is_ somethin' here worth gettin'." He raised his own copy of the cattle prod-like utensil threateningly, the shiny grey surface winking in the sunlight and his baggy tunic hanging in folds around his thick elbow. "That way," he ordered in a deep, grating voice, jabbing the prod towards the faded archway.

For a moment Peter eyed the tool, taking note of the sandy terrain and wide, sun-lit corridor, knowing that if he wanted to stand his ground he'd have to hurry before the other joined them. He'd boxed in university and he'd been good at it, so he was hardly defenceless, but against two armed people he didn't like the odds. One at a time, however…

Something must have shown in his eyes and his ready stance, his fists clenching as his determined eyes flickered up to the stranger's challengingly, because before the physicist could complete the decision the prod came up and jabbed viciously at his chest.

Blue energy reminiscent of the Athosian lighters flashed from the tip, crackling over Peter's dusty blue shirt and making him jerk with a painful start; but to his confused consternation the sensation of an electric shock vanished instantly, replaced instead by a burning, crawling pain over his shoulder blades that stole his breath away. Feeling surged momentarily back into his fingers, making them twitch as the pins and needles he'd been trying to ignore spread in a rush over his skin, the original wound throbbing in tandem with the headache that pounded to life.

"God!" Peter swore, gritting his teeth against the pain before it dulled, one hand reaching automatically for the wound to grip his shoulder. Breathing ragged, mouth dry, he met the amused gaze of the stranger with a scowl to hide the fear that twisted his stomach. _That isn't a bite! _The man's eye flicked to someone behind the physicist and with a sinking heart Peter realized he'd lost his chance. He wasn't a trained fighter; there was no way he could take on the two men together.

"We don't hold back," a thin voice remarked carelessly and Peter instinctively twisted to look over his shoulder at the rangy man behind him, but then hissed as his injury twinged in complaint. "So: this way." The man gestured coldly with his own prod, flicking it with bored negligence in the hot air.

Peter set his jaw grimly, gaze shifting back to glare at the burly man's grotesquely grinning visage before turning in the direction the scrawnier one indicated, his hand dropping from his aching shoulder to his side as he trudged through the yielding sand towards the oasis. Unnoticed by the uncaring traders, blood pinpricked the back of the scientist's shirt, nothing more than spots heralding a greater danger.

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The wagon jolted harshly, threatening to send Peter sprawling into the heap of sacks and tarp-covered junk, secured to the walls with twisted leather cord. The movement made his back ache and head pound, straining the thick rope binding his raw wrists. The canopy was roughly made of thick, unsmoothed wood which seemed to absorb the sun and drown him in hot air, making it difficult to breathe it in. The inner cloth sides fluttered a little with the bump of the cart, but they were closed and the traders didn't seem obliged to lift them to allow any breeze to filter through the outer steel bars, leaving him to sweat in what seemed like his own personal oven. The configuration of the dray made it clear it wasn't just for hauling cargo, but people as well.

The scientist couldn't see outside but guessed that they were travelling over one of the cracked shingle plateaus distantly visible as a shimmering spectre of heat from the sprawling, tumbledown edge of the ruins. He considered the fact that they were headed to another settlement, but the traders didn't quite seem the type to have lived in a barren desert such as this – the only other thing he could think of was that they were headed to a stargate. After all, hadn't Teyla and the Athosians traded across worlds?

The only problem was that he didn't know whether his leaving the world was good or not. If he was right then he'd know where the stargate was, but he'd lose the machinery he'd found in the junk room – and he might not be able to find his way back.

And then the crackle of dry clay beneath wooden wheels turned to the rattle of flagstones before they halted with a shuddering jerk, making the merchandise clatter against the wooden beams of the wagon. Struggling against the splintered floorboards and cluttered goods, Peter shifted closer to the tarp flapping against the outer barred hatch securing the rear, pushing the ragged edge of the grimy material aside to see nothing but an endless, shimmering plateau preceding rolling dunes behind them.

Somewhere to the side he heard a familiar series of humming clunks that made his stomach clench, his breath catching momentarily in his chest with painful remembrance. He swallowed through the nostalgic lump in his throat, willing himself not to think of his duties on Atlantis – not now.

With a hollow roar the stargate Peter couldn't see engaged, casting rippling, blue-tinged light over the red-tinted slate behind the wagon, shimmering over the rusted steel of the bars. With a jerk the wagon began moving again, the clop of the horse's hooves loud on the flagstone as Peter braced himself against the hatch.

_This is only my second time through the stargate,_ he realized randomly before the undulating event horizon whisked him away.

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Jarent was in his threadbare office when the call came from the sentries, seated on his ragged, rush-woven chair before the pock-marked desk. The tabletop was scattered with uneven stacks of paper and various small and valuable commodities, his slim, hand-worn flash-stick lying on top of the clutter.

"Someone returns!" came a rough voice from outside the cloth-covered opening that served as a window, and mousy-haired Jarent idly leaned back in his creaking chair to flip back the tarp with a scarred hand. In the distance was a familiar weathered dray, approaching from the opposite edge of the rocky basin in which the trading camp was situated. It trundled closer along the dusty path, the jungle that spilled over into the gully creeping to the indistinct border of the weedy road leading to the stargate. Under the wavering material canopy of the drivers' seat, two of his slavers were enduring the uncomfortable gait of the old wagon, clothes rustling with the bumpy movements.

Jarent let the cloth fall and the chair to thump back to the rush-covered dirt floor, rising with stiff movements that supported his hawk-like gaze and taut, lined face to exit his office, forgoing the wooden door behind the worn desk which led to the slave booths for the stained cloth one opposite it. Instantly he was struck by the semi-humid air, the swell of endless green foliage reaching for the clear sky around the makeshift station.

Down the dusty, stone-cracked lane to his left was the main street of the thriving little town, where stalls with faded coloured tarps stood overflowing with precious – and often useless – commodities. Jarent's trade, however, was primarily in slaves – or prey, depending on the customer. The rough wooden stage he owned beneath its stretched, bleached hide was behind his office and the slave pens, empty for now, but soon to be crowded with slaves and patrons alike.

Ignoring the bright sun which beat down on him and the sand that settled in his patched leather clothes, Jarent waited for the wagon to pull to a dust-swirling halt before him. Socim leapt down from the wagon, beads clicking slightly from his long hair, and met Jarent's piercing blue gaze with a bored one of his own. "Not much there," he reported, flicking his flash-stick absently from side to side as his associate clambering down from the groaning cart, tying the reins off securely to the splinter of wood intended for that purpose. "Was a long shot anyway – likely picked clean long before now." Socim paused but Jarent didn't answer, waiting patiently for the rest of the report.

"We ain't empty-handed," Arnet grunted, flipping aside the heavy steel bolt of the hatch with a clunk and tugging it open with a screech of rusty hinges. "Oi, git out here," he called to someone inside, flicking away the canvas and eyeing the occupant with undisguised, somewhat amused contempt. There was a defiant pause and Socim sighed impatiently, tapping his tanned shoulder absently with his flash-stick.

Then a figure stumbled wearily out of the back, almost crashing to the ground before Arnet caught him tightly around the upper arm, holding him up. The burly slaver pushed the sun-browned prisoner forward for Jarent's inspection, unheedful of the dark-haired man's noise of complaint. He met Jarent's unblinking examination with a grim expression, brown eyes hard with determination; but behind that Jarent's expert gaze picked out clouded pain. Inwardly the slaver noted that unlike most of the prisoners he'd seen this man was either used to scrutiny or merely possessed enough confidence not to be bothered by it. That could be a problem.

Jarent's eyes flickered over the rest of him, taking in the callused hands, the hardship-lined, bearded face, flushed from too much warmth, and the well-built physique beneath sweat-stained, unfamiliar clothes of blue and red. His experienced stare lingered on the arc of frayed holes on the front of the faded blue shirt, his muscles tight with warning. Wordlessly he reached for the tattered belt cinching his loose, dirt-stained clothes at the waist, flipping open the sharpened flick-knife he tugged from its simple leather sheath. The man tensed, eyes narrowing cautiously and lips parting in the beginnings of an objection, but before he could speak Jarent gripped his tight, V-shaped collar and sliced easily through the thick neckline. With another jerk that made the prisoner wince Jarent viciously ripped the shirt open, shifting the ragged edges aside to reveal a series of shiny oval scars in the shape of a Wraith handprint on his smooth chest.

For a moment Jarent stared, ignoring the cautiously quizzical looks Arnet and Socim were exchanging. Then the slaver's jaw tightened, his movements jerky with restrained apprehension as he shouldered a startled Arnet away from behind the man, tugging down the back of the damp collar to reveal the puffy, tenderly bruised skin of a semi-healed wound, still weeping puss and blood.

"You fools," Jarent spoke at last, his voice low and raspy from the constant wear of dust on his throat. Nervously Arnet glanced at Socim, whose bushy eyebrows had shot skyward in consternation. "He's a runner." Arnet paled, his hazel eyes wide in fear, and Socim cursed behind Jarent's tight, angry tones. "Did it ever occur to you that he was alone in those ruins for a reason! Do you _want_ to bring the Wraith down on us all!" With a growl Jarent turned on his heel, boots thumping on the rock of the basin. "Get rid of him! It's not worth your hides to keep him here. Push him through the stargate to Lohmorar – there was a hiveship there last time I checked. Let them have their sport." He strode furiously back to his office, his rigid back speaking volumes to his underlings as they hurried to do his bidding in swirls of choking dust.

And Peter, head pounding, wound throbbing, dizzy and weak from too much heat, could do nothing but stumble in compliance with their commands.


	4. What Hell Looks Like

**A/N:**_ Yus! This is an update! I'm sorry for taking so long, but I tend to have bouts of extreme procrastination – and some all-round laziness. Plus there's the fact the chappie just went on and on, much longer than my usual._

_Anyway! Thanks to everyone for reviewing, it's a real bonus to posting. Although, c'mon, there has to be something wrong! But don't worry, fififolle, I'll take care of Peter… I'll just take him out for a whump or two first. (evil grin) This chappie is probably where the real whumpage starts… so he's not gonna catch a break just yet. Although he does get one in this chappie… yeah, I'd call that a break…_

_Moving on…_

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** III **

**WHAT HELL LOOKS LIKE**

Mist.

It swirled over the quiet, rippling surface of the swamp, writhing around the tangled roots plunging deep into the murky water and the twisted trunks arising from the damp ground. It wisped with cold fingers around Peter's faded red-and-blue clothes, bathing them in pearly grey fog as it clung to the material. The humidity caught thickly in his throat as he struggled to breathe in the rot-cloying air.

Before him the gloomy water parted softly, the haze shifting around him with an eerie chill that made him shiver, his skin pricked with goosebumps beneath his drenched and now foul-smelling clothes. He could feel the silt beneath his shoes, thick clouds of sand and dirt churning around his legs as he waded towards the fog-wisped foliage of land ahead.

The cold seeped into his quivering skin, stinging at his cuts even as the pull of his muscles elicited the semi-dull ache of his back. Before long his feet discovered firmer ground, sending him staggering over stones and roots as he struggled up the steep, yielding bank. Even as his fingers scrabbled in the dirt, searching for easily accessible rocks and debris, Peter wondered whether it was wise to have left the stargate.

_There was nothing else you could do,_ he reassured himself yet again, even though his stomach clenched with doubt against the truth of the statement, hands tugging one fist-sized stone from the festering mire. He didn't have any addresses he could safely gate to aside from Atlantis, and the only way he could think of to signal them was to throw objects through in a pattern – Morse Code came to mind. And to do that, he needed something he could send. The stargate's cloud-shaded clearing had been mostly comprised of murky water, lapping at the crumbling edge of the cracked stone podium and separating the ring from the rolling, misty hillocks rising from the outer banks.

The gate was behind him now, standing silently in familiar watchfulness over the towering trees and deepened shadows of the swamp in the traditional company of the lake-wallowing DHD, waiting for his return with supplies.

He'd already discovered that most of the rubble close at hand was either too small or had a tendency to crumble; otherwise he'd never have ventured so far. He needed to be ready, or he'd run out before his message was complete. As it was, he'd anticipated taking hours to get what he needed.

He'd never considered that he'd have to _find_ them first.

Wearily Peter slogged up the bank and slumped to the damp, leaf-strewn ground beneath a lined, mottled tree nearby, resting for a moment beside the shaded stream while he surveyed his meagre collection of stones glumly, thinking almost wistfully about the hefty wreckage on the desert planet. Branches draped down around him in silent offering of false privacy as the mist continued to seep along the spongy ground, darkness shrouded beneath the cover of the thick canopy. His back tingled with the familiar sensation of pins and needles, fingers and toes numb with both cold and… something else.

Something itched, stinging his arm, and absently Peter moved to scratch, dark-circled eyes set distantly on the soggy, leaf-nestled rocks between his feet. His callused fingers met soft, bulging flesh and Peter froze with a heart-pounding moment of disgusted horror before his eyes flickered to find what was unmistakably a slimy leech suckling wetly at his skin, its body swollen with his own blood.

_God._ Peter shuddered, swallowing down the bile that rose in his mouth as he watched the leech with a sort of fascinated revulsion, its grey-mottled bulk undulating with working muscles. He was suddenly acutely, uncomfortably aware of all the aches and itches that afflicted his exhausted body, feeling light-headed and flushed. His hand twitched as he resisted the urge to pull the leech forcibly off of him, knowing it would do little good in the long run. The first overt sign of life he'd seen on this planet and it was _eating_ him.

Instead he tore away from the unnerving sight, blinking rapidly against the sting of thick air and exhaustion. His hands pressed momentarily to the sodden ground as he levered himself to his feet, coming away with dirt clinging to the lines of his palms. For a moment dizziness swept over him in light that singed the edges of his vision, but then with a sigh, filthy clothes clinging wetly to his tanned skin, Peter gathered the stones and stumbled onward between the gently rippling water and the looming, shadowed interior of the swamp, eyes flickering over the ground in search of debris.

He hadn't staggered along for more than a few minutes, slipping on the muddy bank, flicking at the leaves in his face and ignoring the buzz of insects, when he felt a sharp twinge on his shoulder that was almost lost amidst the prevalent tingle of pins and needles. Feeling sick and exhausted, Peter reached up, expecting to feel the soft bulge of another leech beneath his torn shirt, but instead he was met with the wooden shaft of a sap-glazed dart.

Swallowing through his suddenly dry mouth, Peter plucked it away with fumbling fingers, eyes unintentionally wide as he regarded the slim, green-tinged wood and ragged grey feathers. The tip was coated with a thick, sticky substance, staining the wood of the point an almost unnatural lime colour, and Peter's heart lurched, his chest clenching fearfully.

"Oh, dear," he whispered in a shaky voice, dropping the slender dart as his eyes darted anxiously towards the dark foliage, his skin prickling with the sudden paranoia of attack. He took a few deep breaths to calm his racing heartbeat and shaking hands, cradling the almost-forgotten rocks against him, unaware of his pale face as he took an unsteady step in the direction he'd been going. Unnoticed, the leech clinging to his arm coiled tensely, releasing its tight grip and falling to the mulch with a wet plop.

The scientist didn't get far before his fear-heightened senses heard the quiet zip of another dart, followed by the vanishing prick of the sharpened tip on his thigh. Peter snatched it up and tossed it aside jerkily, smearing the thick substance over his muddy jumpsuit and fingers. Barely a second later his foot caught on an upturned root, sending the world careening around him in blurs of green, grey and brown as he fell, the stones tumbling from his grasp. He landed with a blow that forced a pained grunt from his lips, sprawled face down on the marshy ground.

For a stunned moment he lay on the damp mulch, breathing in the mouldy scent of the decaying leaves pressed into his face. His hands dug into the soggy dirt as he lifted himself up onto his elbows with a hiss of pain, his head and back pounding in complaint. For a moment he didn't notice that the pins and needles had stopped, leaving only the throb between his shoulder blades he knew was the original wound.

Then he made to get up, leaning heavily on the creeper-twined tree nearby. Dizziness spun the looming, vine-like foliage in a whirl of colour before smouldering his vision into white flashes of light. Unseeingly he sank against the rough-textured tree, his breath quickening as he fought the pull of heavy darkness, swirling around his greying sight.

And just as quickly as it had come, it subsided. The dizziness wisped away into the steady curves and lines of motionless green foliage, leaving behind a light-headedness borne of exhaustion and hunger. Struggling for breath, Peter slipped weakly down to the root-twisted base of the tree, resting wearily against it with his darkly-bearded cheek pressed against the rough bark. _What the bloody hell is going on?_ He wondered tiredly, eyes flickering shut as he focussed only on his deep breaths. Whatever had been on that dart was quick-acting, but why hadn't it worked?

_I'm sorry, that matters, why? You're alive, aren't you?_ A voice sounding remarkably like Rodney McKay snapped, and despite himself Peter found energy for a silent chuckle. He knew he hadn't found the most ideal spot for a rest but at that moment he didn't care; he'd been kidnapped, cooked, waterlogged and shot, and all he wanted was sleep.

The owners of the menacing green darts disagreed. Peter had already begun to drift, sagged against the vine-woven tree, when they dropped softly from the thick layers of the canopy. The squelching thump of multiple bare feet hitting muddy ground was enough to rouse Peter reluctantly from his almost-sleep, but when the sound didn't come again he dismissed it with the dispassionate rationalization of the weary.

That is until something jabbed him cruelly on the shoulder.

Instantly Peter's eyes snapped open with a shocked gasp, his arm automatically slapping one pale, muddied hand away. He heard a hiss of surprise and several shocked exclamations before his eyes focussed on the scrawny, bare-chested man regarding him warily, a stone-tipped spear pointed unshakably at Peter. His grey hair was cropped so short it was almost fuzz, his stained trousers patched with thick string, and behind him was a restless party of similarly clad men, whispering apprehensively to one another whilst fixing him with uneasy glances.

_Oh, damn._ A chill prickled down Peter's neck as he considered the spears and dart-pipes the men carried, tied with leather strings of ragged, decorative feathers. Most of them were pointed at him, but it was the distrusting glare in the varying green and grey eyes behind those weapons that unnerved him the most. He had no doubt that they were the ones who had just shot him – but their intentions, he could only guess.

Whatever those intentions, they weren't friendly. He got that point just by looking at the scowling, confused faces and listening to the hurried whispers.

"Cursed," they repeated over and over in hushed, fearful tones. "The sleep did not come, he's cursed..."

_I don't like the sound of that._ He flinched away as the leader brandished his spear, the sharpened stone dark beneath the dappled shadow of the trees. His free hand spasmed in the air, jerking back hard enough that his elbow cracked against the hard, lined flesh of the tree. Pain sparked momentarily down his arm, causing nausea to sweep momentarily over him in a dizzying whirl, but it faded so quickly it didn't even leave a numb residual ache in the joint. Peter swallowed hard against the queasiness, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. It let him sag against the mottled, veined trunk, hands pressed to the cool surface.

Something scraped gently on his chest and his eyes snapped open, his every muscle instantly tense even as he kept himself still. The mud-streaked face of the leader lined in a frown, the rough tip of the spear pushing aside the frayed edge of Peter's shirt, fully revealing the shiny arc of scars that had been left by the Wraith. Peter shuddered involuntarily, hardly breathing as his eyes rested on the threatening spear-point. He noted the surge of whispers only vaguely, the natives pointing with shaking fingers and craning their heads in curiosity only to look away with expressions of disgust.

_I get the feeling that Wraith markings aren't a good thing,_ Peter registered, jaw clenched as he stared back at the chief's furrowed brow, wishing he could wipe the sweat and grime off his own forehead; but he didn't dare move. The spearhead hovered in his face and the scientist flinched back automatically, but it merely gestured curtly in the humid air, the inference clear.

Reluctantly Peter clambered to his feet, his movements slow with caution to avoid any confusion as to his intentions and the dizziness that seemed attached to the headache thrumming behind his eyes. The natives watched him warily nonetheless, hunched in gestures of timidity and shifting with nervous movements behind trees. The leader was the only one who stood up straight, piercing eyes of green regarding Peter grimly as a younger man with blue-black hair visible in tufts under mud and leaves came to his side, head turning about skittishly. "What do you plan to do with him?" the youth demanded in sharp, rasping tones, his stormy grey eyes sliding around Peter as though afraid to look at him directly.

Peter found himself holding his breath as he waited for the leader's answer, feet set firmly apart in the mulch to keep himself upright. His head spun and he wanted nothing more than sleep, food and security. Why did all the people he came across have to be hostile? _Of course, it could be simply because of the scar…_

In the desert he had been confronted with it day after day, needing to take care of the wound so it didn't get infected in the heat and sand. It brought to mind all of Carson's research on the Wraith feeding process, constantly reminding him exactly what it had felt like from a personal point of view. In his dreams he had revisited it again and again, feeling it not from his own point of view but as Sumner had, as all the Wraith's victims had. As all the Wraith's potential victims _could. _It had become a legacy of the Wraith dominion, a tangible burden of the cullings, one he had learned to bear over time until he barely noticed its weight.

Twice, now, it had come back more heavily than before; a symbol of the Wraith disease. He was a leper, an outcast. Cursed.

"All pariahs go to Morag," the leader answered in a low voice without taking his piercing eyes from Peter, and the scientist's breath caught in his chest. He knew enough about mythology to know Morag wasn't someone… some_thing…_ that he wanted to meet.

The problem was, he wasn't going to be given much of a choice.

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Peter staggered, the mulch twisting beneath his scruffy, muddy shoes and almost sending him sprawling to the grubby forest carpet. The long fingers encircled tightly around his upper arm prevented it, his own hands twisted and tied uncomfortably behind his back with thick, vine-like rope. Dappled shadows passed over them, accenting the dark circles around the scientist's brown eyes.

His only companion was the steely, grey-haired native who all but dragged him through the marsh, yanking on him impatiently whenever his tired feet caught on the damp, soil-laden roots peeking above the ground. The rest of the party had vanished into the trees upon hearing their leader's decision, casting worried glances back at him until the semi-dry mud slathering their skin had faded them into the grey-and-green dappled background. He knew their concern wasn't for him, either.

_How did it come to this?_ Peter found himself wondering through the numb cloud that had settled over his mind, wrenching his foot absently from the grasp of thinly netted tendrils coiled across the nonexistent path. _I was supposed to be Atlantis-based, not an offworlder. The gateroom was my place, my kingdom. We agreed. Not in words, but we agreed._

And he considered whether or not it would be easier to just give in to fate.

Wrapped in a thick blanket of mental fog, he forgot where he was and that he was still stumbling along at the behest of his captor, leaves and vines lashing in his face. He left it all behind, giving in to the weariness of the mind, letting some of the thoughts he'd been keeping at bay trickle through.

_What if Atlantis _was_ destroyed?_ He reflected despairingly, feeling the tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with fatigue. _What if they're all gone and I'm the last Atlantean? I've come across nothing but enemies, why am I still fighting? I can't –_ he almost choked on the lump in his throat. He didn't notice the crumbling, moss-covered branch until he'd tripped over it, splintering the soggy wood with a crack.

The weight of the native at his side stopped him from crashing to the leaf-strewn ground, but instead he careened into a nearby tree with a jarring blow that forced the breath from his lungs, making his head pound and neck twinge painfully. Irritably his captor yanked him upright, causing the world to spin around him.

_Stop._ Peter pleaded inwardly, though the only thing that made it to his lips was a moan. He desperately wanted to collapse, rest, but instead he found himself straightening up and locking his knees so he didn't fall.

It was a familiar feeling, one that brought back memories from a time long before even Atlantis; that of bright lights, bruised fists, and stubborn resolve. He never gave up. He couldn't. He _wouldn't._ That was tantamount to letting the Wraith win.

So he set his jaw grimly, pushing away his dizziness and nausea, focussing on those long-distant memories, the pride he felt whenever he won out over exhaustion. Now, like then, he couldn't stop what was happening to him, but he could go along with it. He could find a way to turn it around. He hadn't given up when the hiveship had been screeching around his ears, the handprint still fresh on his chest, not when he'd been surrounded by foes, knowing what they'd do to him but ignorant of Atlantis's fate.

Compared to then, now was a lawn party.

The throb between his shoulder blades served to cut through the fog that threatened to wrap around his mind, the recollections reminding him that, by nature, he persevered.

When the native tugged impatiently on his arm again he followed the man's lead, fixing his determined gaze on the swaying ground and banishing any thought of surrender. _There's still a chance._

He lost all sense of time, his concentration set on keeping his unsteady feet. The crowding foliage thinned, the dim sun beaming momentarily through the green-tinged canopy in intermittent dapples of light before grey clouds covered it again. It only highlighted the sickly browns and reds of the increasingly marshy ground, sucking at Peter's boots and splattering the grubby hems of his weathered jumpsuit.

Peter refocussed on the path ahead as the trees opened up, spreading their tangled curtains of red-tinged leaves to either side to frame a mist-layered tarn shaded by the overcast sky. Extending into the gently rippling water was a crumbled dais of stone, its brick-lined edge stained green by algae. The land-based edge had vanished beneath a soft carpet of yellow-green moss, the curve of the rim cradled by gnarled roots the dipped thirstily into the murky lake.

In the centre of the podium was a weathered chain, laying in coiled links and secured to the stone with a scratched and rusty loop of metal. Attached to that was a heavy, engraved iron collar that drew Peter's alarmed attention, but as he stiffened beneath the native's hard grasp another hand encircled his other arm. Together the two warriors steered him brusquely towards the dais, his once-black shoes slipping on forest mulch in a futile attempt to resist. A third was already picking up the collar with the jingle of a well-made chain, unlatching the smooth hook clasping the two halves of the nicked ring together.

Chips flaked into the fog-wisped moat with sprinkles of dust as they moved from the soggy bank to the ancient dais, the hunter with cropped, blue-black hair raising the collar to snap around Peter's neck. The scientist flinched as the chilly weight settled uncomfortably close around his throat, made clammy by the fog and damp, the chain clinking gently against his mud-crusted arm. The natives backed away, the gazes of the two younger, dark-haired warriors slipping around him uneasily. The grey-haired man's piercing green eyes narrowed, meeting Peter's bleakly harrowed stare before he turned and walked, straight-backed, after his companions into the concealing trees.

Peter watched after them somewhat blankly for a moment, past the point of caring where they'd gone or why they'd left him. Then he gave himself a mental shake and turned his gaze to the bilge-filled cracks of the flagstones, absently testing the wiry ropes with a slow twist that pinched his skin. That was when a blinking, glittering light on the lakeside arc of the dais caught his attention, glowing starkly against the dull greys of the drifting mist that writhed its tenuous fingers around it. _That looks like a beacon –_ Peter's brow furrowed in thought and he took an unconscious step towards it, the chain clinking heavily with the movement.

"Got yourself in a little trouble there, Doc?"

The sound of the cheerful, utterly familiar voice made Peter's head snap towards the high, loose bank on the opposite side of the lake, his eyes widening in disbelief. His breath caught as the dark-skinned owner emerged from the limp and shadowed foliage like a ghost, a bronze Wraith stunner resting comfortably on his shoulder, his black fatigues fading him into the dull background.

"Lieutenant?" Peter's tone was incredulous, his chest clenching with relief and exultation.

Ford grinned, one slender hand rising to the black bandanna tight across his forehead in a fleeting salute. He skidded down the slippery shore, taking leaves and dirt with him as he splashed carelessly into the waist-deep water. He swathed a trail through the fog and water, and within moments he'd reached the dais and hauled himself, dripping, out of the shallow lagoon, laying his damp weapon on the stone. Peter's wide eyes flashed over the familiar black and grey uniform, the bulky Kevlar vest that hung about the young man's shoulders, drinking in the sight of a friend.

Ford tugged an army-issue blade from his belt with a scrape, moving to saw through the twisted and tough rope binding Peter's wrists. Numbly grateful, Peter shook the cord to the ground with a light slap as Ford sheathed the knife and unlatched the chipped collar. The hinge creaked in complaint as he removed it and tossed it to the softening blanket of moss, vanishing into the thick layer of plant life. "C'mon, Doc, we gotta hustle." Without hesitation Ford picked up the faintly glowing stunner, jumping back into the mist and water with a scrape of his boots on crumbling stone. Rubbing his chafed wrists, Peter followed suite, the back of his aching shoulders prickling with uncertain anticipation against the eerie watchfulness of the forest behind him.

The cold hit him like a shock, making his breath catch and his skin prickle with goosebumps as he followed the damp back of the mist-shrouded lieutenant in front of him. They soon reached the bank, scrambling up the slope and ignoring the muck that clung to them, though Peter shuddered as he forced away thoughts of leeches. "Hurry, Doc," Ford urged, all levity gone from his smooth features, his dark eyes raking the opposite shoreline with unnerving caution. His gaze centred, narrowed, one hand reaching out to grasp Peter's faded sleeve as he tugged the scientist forcefully behind a tree.

Ford raised a warning finger against the question on Peter's lips, the stunner nestled in the soldier's lap as he leaned against the soggy, fungus-thick bark. When the lieutenant turned his head to peer around the thick tendrils of a parasite tree, clinging to the side of the host under which they crouched, Peter copied him, shifting carefully until he could peek cautiously beneath the slope of a branch. His heart skipped a beat, his body tensing, his stomach twisting with fear.

_Wraith._

Two of them prowled the other bank, drawing closer to the mist-veiled dais. Their translucent skin and armour made them look like ghosts themselves, gliding supernaturally through the trees and vines. Their stunners were levelled from the waist, the cartridges glowing yellow beneath the shadowed sky, the faceless ridged masks giving them their frightening air of dispassion and inscrutability.

Peter let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, then had to make himself take the next, tracking the two Wraith with wide eyes set in a pale, sweaty face. Unnoticed, his knuckles whitened as he gripped the bark, the wood disintegrating under his hands. _The device must signal to a ship, telling them to come when a sacrifice is ready._ The detached part of his mind realized, but the rest of him was clutched with dread as he watched and waited.

Finally the Wraith discontinued their search, having wandered up and down the lapping banks and into the shadowed forest behind, but apparently not thinking it worth the effort or not considering that their quarry could have escaped across the channel. One had kicked momentarily at the cut rope, looped around the rusty pin chaining the collar to the dais, but other than that they didn't seem to care overly much that a prisoner had escaped.

But then, with masks like that, who could tell?

Fleetingly Peter wondered whether or not the natives would find themselves attacked, punished, for this unintentional slight, but then Ford gestured towards the tree line without looking at him and the two Atlanteans vanished into the looming safety of the marsh.

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Ten minutes later Peter all but collapsed into the comforting curve of a tree's mottled roots, his limbs clutched with a deeply inset weariness that left him feeling vaguely numb. His chest heaved with deep, ragged breaths as he leaned over his knees, worn out by Ford's quick march. As his heartbeat slowed he rested his elbows on his knees, the soggy, rolled up sleeves of his tattered shirt like thick bracelets encircling his arms. His back twinged as the muscles stretched with the movement but he ignored it, instead glancing upwards towards Ford. The lieutenant was shifting uneasily, long fingers flexing restlessly on the stunner's trigger, his eyes flickering grimly over the leafy, draping vines reaching to the ground and the patches of grey sky to be seen through the otherwise thick canopy.

_How did you get here, where are the others, is Atlantis still intact –_ all the questions Peter wanted to ask whirled in his mind, his chest now tight with apprehension and uncertainty instead of fatigue; but there were no words to express how relieved he was to see Ford, to know that, no matter what, _something_ of Atlantis had survived. And the words came out before he'd even thought them, the underlying thought barely formed before they sounded. "I don't suppose you have anything to eat?" Peter winced inwardly at his hoarse voice and the question both; after all this time and that was the first thing he had to say?

Mind you, he hadn't eaten in a long while – the hollow rumble of his belly could attest to that – and the last time he _had_ eaten, it'd been a string of tough, barely-edible roots and a handful of sour nuts. He needed food or he'd probably pass out before they'd gone more than another ten minutes.

Ford glanced at him, appearing to pay only partial attention to the scientist. The rest of his focus was on surveying the sheets of concealing leaves and twisted, mottled forms of the forest. As far as Peter could see there was nothing around; no animals that he'd seen, nothing but the sound of distant birds. But then, after being in the seemingly-lifeless desert, he'd learned that just because he couldn't see them didn't mean they weren't there.

One hand unzipped one of the many pockets of Ford's black Kevlar vest as the soldier withdrew a power bar and turning to hand it to Peter. Gratefully Peter accepted it, ripping open the shiny orange wrapper and grimacing as his numb fingers fumbled.

Casting one last, wary appraisal over the curved, soft-seeming shapes of the forest, Ford crouched beside him, his slender weapon settled snugly into his shoulder. "You look like hell, Doc," the young man observed seriously as he watched Peter breaking off small pieces from the bar, restraining his ravenous urge to gulp it down in a couple of bites. It was the closest approximation to _real_ food he'd had in months; he wanted to savour it.

Peter laughed quietly, bobbing his head in tactile agreement as he worked another titbit from the end of the bar. It felt good to laugh; he'd had so little reason to do so, lately. But now he did; Ford's presence could only mean that the others were near, that Atlantis was safe, that he would soon be able to go home… _Really? What evidence do you have for that?_ The thought was shocking and utterly unwelcome, simply because it was right. Ford was there, but… _Look again. He doesn't look as though he's been living in luxury, does he?_

His gaze flickered to examine Ford's haggard appearance as he raised the food to his lips, the lieutenant's head moving in a strangely bird-like manner to study the unvarying green-and-grey surroundings. One side of the soldier's face was sunken and stretched, his pupil so dilated that his eye looked black. Gone was the boyish enthusiasm Peter remembered, replaced by a paranoia that kept his eyes flashing constantly over their surroundings, never once remaining on something for more than a second. The black bandanna covering the young man's short, fluffy hair made him seem more in place with the wilderness, more of a guerrilla, a scavenger, than a soldier.

_Damn. _Peter felt a pang, the potential euphoria fading before it could even take proper hold. _Something happened._ He turned his attention back to the power bar, suddenly realizing he'd been fiddling with it instead of eating it. He was hungry, knew he had to keep up his strength, but suddenly lost his appetite. "To be honest, you don't look much better," he put forth with a trace of a smile to cover the sudden chill of apprehension that prickled his arms, raising another unwanted piece of the power bar to maintain a guise of nonchalance.

A sudden movement to his side proved to be Ford, staring at him with an expression of paranoid accusation. "What's that supposed to mean?" the lieutenant demanded, looking Peter up and down with an almost hostile air, his grip on the stunner tightening.

Peter tensed, prayed that Ford didn't notice, and instead raised his eyebrows in surprise, the hand with the morsel of food drooping in the air as he met Ford's eyes squarely. "You look like you've been out here for a while." The admission made his stomach clench, a tiny, dispassionate voice in the back of his mind running through of list of the possible whys. _Atlantis is destroyed. Atlantis has been captured by the Wraith._ The next words came out before he could stop them, his tone unintentionally bitter as he turned from Ford's smoothing expression to cast a critical gaze out at the muggy forest around them. "I know what that feels like."

_All too well. _For so long he'd had no one to talk to, no one to review his experience with. He'd wanted to set it aside, pretend that he could ignore it and it would go away; but he knew it wouldn't, and Peter had never been one to disillusion himself. To survive, even to survive in hope as he had, had required him to accept his situation to a certain extent, accept it and learn from it – even as he strove to change it. The past was determined. The future was not.

He suddenly remembered he still had some food in his hand but unable to find it in himself to eat it. Instead he tossed it away into the drifting fog with a tiny jerk, folding the crinkly wrapper over the end of the bar to finish later.

"Sounds like you've been through some heavy stuff, Doc," Ford's voice cut through his thoughts and Peter looked up to find the lieutenant fixing him with a concerned stare, but his eyes glittered with some unrecognisable emotion that countered the worry. "How'd you manage to survive that explosion, anyway?"

Peter shook his head unconsciously in answer, fingers turning the half-eaten power bar over and over in the humid air. "It doesn't matter." Yes, it did, but suddenly he couldn't take the time to tell his story; he wanted to know… he had to know… "What about you – and Atlantis? What happened?" He pleaded Ford with his eyes, demanding to know why Ford was wandering alone on random planets, why he looked so haggard. He had to have been alone; he would've contacted someone by now, one of his team, if they'd been there too.

"Atlantis is okay," Ford said dismissively, breaking off the intent look he'd been giving Peter and returning to a guarded inspection of the marsh. "Sheppard and the others, too." A wave of relief swept over Peter, so intense that he found a lump in his throat restricting him from speaking, and he bowed his head over his knees with a small, accepting nod, his hands interlaced before him. The tenseness he hadn't even noticed was there had vanished, leaving his body weak with after-adrenaline.

When he looked up again it was to find Ford glaring angrily into the distant, creeper-like trees, his jaw set accusingly at someone only he could see; yet somehow his eyes looked lost, uncertain. "What about you?" Peter asked with a slight gesture of his chin. "Why are you out here," Again his gaze flickered up and over the draping red-tinged leaves, sheeting down from the wide-reaching boughs of the tree cradling him. "…and alone, at that."

Ford jabbed at the soggy marsh vehemently with the spear-like point of the stunner, throwing up small tufts of mulch and making the fog swirl, coating the smooth exterior in a thin layer of condensation. "They're afraid of me." he ground out, stabbing the dirt viciously as though it had done him a wrong. "Afraid of what I've become." His blows grew stilted, violent, increasing in power. He never noticed Peter's raised eyebrows, nor that the Brit was watching him worriedly through his hairline. Finally with one last fierce thrust into the earth the soldier desisted, glancing elsewhere with a scowl. "I've changed." He hardly seemed to be speaking to Peter now, but the scientist couldn't guess who he might've thought he was addressing in any case. "Become stronger." His fist tightened around the thin barrel of the stunner, fingers flexing in tense readiness. "They don't understand what it's like." He made a sound that could have been either a chuckle or a snort, but wasn't amusing at all. "To be out here, all alone. Having your friends turn on you. No one to trust you. Have everyone think you're nuts, ready to go off at any time."

Peter remained silent, both fascinated and horrified by the strength of Ford's misguided passion. Having his friends turn on him? Not even acerbic-seeming McKay would do that. Still, it explained what Ford was doing… it sounded like he'd run away.

That was when Ford turned on him, his face shining with utter fervour. "But you know what it's like. You've been out here, all alone, surviving." Peter met Ford's fanatical gaze squarely, his stomach twisting with uncertainty, nonplussed by the focus glittering in the lieutenant's eyes. "I mean, I saved you, right? You can tell them. I can be trusted. I proved that."

"I don't even know what happened, Lieutenant," Peter answered softly, honestly. "But right now, I don't have any way to get back to Atlantis, or I would have done it a long time ago." It was a hint, an opening for Ford to fulfil Peter's tentative hopes or confirm his resigned expectations.

Instead the lieutenant studied him as though he'd never seen a human being before and had found the species lacking, a slight, almost disbelieving twist to his lips. "They all think you're dead."

The words hit Peter harder than he ever expected they would, since he'd known from the beginning that was the most probable outcome. Even if they had seen the culling beam… a rescue attempt to reach one man would have been suicide.

Still he jerked his otherwise calm gaze from Ford to hide the pain reflecting in his brown eyes, the muscles of his jaw working in silent acknowledgment.

_I'm sorry._

He'd said that to Rodney, not knowing exactly what he'd been apologising for, not at first. Over time he'd decided it was because he had had to make a decision for Rodney, one that too many of Rodney's team had already made for him. A decision that Rodney could never have made, never have accepted – one that, no matter the outcome, no matter who had made it, he would bear the responsibility for anyway.

"That's what happens," the scientist said at last, and looked back to Ford, managing a faltering smile that didn't reach his darkened eyes. "When the satellite you're on explodes." A bad attempt at humour, but all he could manage at the time. Peter found himself unable to keep Ford's steady gaze, glancing back down to his entwined fingers, still clutching the power bar.

"Don't worry, Doc," Ford followed Peter's movements, eyes showing nothing but utter, almost desperate, sincerity. "I'll get you back." Peter's eyes flickered up in slight surprise at his words and Ford ducked his head to see his expression properly, nodding faintly to assure him of his certainty. "That way you'll be back, and…" He shifted a little, tilting one shoulder in a small shrug, lips twitching vaguely in a humourless smile. "…and you can tell them I'm okay."

Seeing at the young soldier's earnestness, Peter couldn't help but smile back in acceptance of his loyalty, his dedication, and felt his own hopes rising enough to make light of his next words. "You're just forgetting one thing," he pointed out with a light dip of his stiff shoulders, leaning over his knees in a broad nod. "I assume you don't have a GDO."

It was a valid guess; Ford seemed reluctant to return to Atlantis, eager to prove himself, and in his single-minded state of mind Peter doubted he would have prepared for such an eventuality.

That was confirmed by Ford's look of uncertain confusion, drawing back to study the physicist doubtfully. "What, can't you just… build one?"

Peter hung his head with a sigh, his bearded chin touching his chest and his eyes fluttering shut in momentary despair. _And to think I had all that technology at my fingertips._ But he didn't make any mention of that to Ford, hiding his own dejection from the apprehensive young man. "With the right equipment, perhaps." Peter acknowledged, his head coming up to look around the shade-dappled foliage before him. "But GDOs are remarkably intricate pieces of equipment, especially the versions we use here in the Pegasus Galaxy. The most I was hoping for was to build a beacon to pique their interest. Doctor Weir would never leave a distress beacon uninvestigated."

He turned towards Ford unseeingly, not looking at him, but sightlessly at the swirl of dampened leaves circling the end of the stiff root nearby. "But, last I noticed, this place isn't exactly advanced." He had considered the blinking device on the dais, but knew that it would take a great deal of time and effort to pry it loose, if that was even possible. Considering the fact that Wraith were prowling the shadowed planet like, well, wraith, it was a risk he preferred not to take.

The only other alternative was his original idea – to throw rocks through until someone answered. But with the natives, and now the Wraith, around, he doubted they'd have enough time to collect enough of anything to do so. Here, at least… perhaps another planet would be safer and still give them time for a little bit of treasure hunting…

Lost for a moment in his own thoughts, it was to his surprise when Ford grinned widely, whacking him affectionately on the arm with the back of his hand. "Not a problem, Doc."

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"A Wraith hiveship?" Peter echoed, aghast, as he struggled through the wet mulch, ignoring the chilly fog clutching at the damp folds of his grubby jumpsuit. His former lassitude was completely forgotten in the face of this new information; after all, there was a distinct difference between being chained to face danger and walking willingly into it. Ford strode easily over the uneven ground, disregarding the torpid water that splashed over his boots as he stepped through the shallow creek trickling softly through the twisted roots to a deeper lake just off the gently sloping hill. The lieutenant didn't even look around, pausing at the top of the knoll and surveying the close-standing trees past the leafy creepers draping by his coffee-coloured cheek. "You can't be serious!"

The soldier cast an inattentive glance towards the scientist even as Peter cursed his petulant tone of voice, but Ford didn't seem to notice. "Sure, Doc," he answered easily, looking about at the pearly-grey, shifting surface of the lake, marred only by the soft ripple induced by insects and vines, dipping into the wisping shroud of fog. "It'll be easy. Most of them are still hibernating anyway; that's why I chose this ship." At the last words Ford turned momentarily towards Peter with a confident lilt and a flashing grin, as though things couldn't work out any other way than what he was imagining.

Ford started off again, along the spongy edge of the cloud-shaded lagoon, his eyes darting around cautiously over the creeping foliage as Peter, standing at the base of the mound with his scratched hands on his hips, shook his head with a slight, humourless chuckle.

He knew firsthand how quickly things could go wrong.

Still, watching after the enthusiastic young soldier, he couldn't help the tiny smile that played on his lips and heaved a light-hearted sigh. His jocularity faded almost instantly, his eyes darkening, and he reluctantly followed Ford as the lieutenant was partially swallowed by the thin mist, forcing a jog out of his weary legs to catch up.

The lieutenant was still talking when the scientist reached him, the sprawling trees reaching out to embrace them into the shrouded depths of the fens as the open-aired lake was left behind. "We just walk in, I get the enzyme, you get your gadgets, and we leave."

_He _is_ serious._ Peter realized, his stomach clenching fearfully, his body already tense. _He really wants to go in there._ A flash of memory swept through his mind: the cold fog, the ethereal voices, the beams and webs pressing down on him… Peter shivered involuntarily, speeding up into a quick gait bordering on a jog to draw near Ford's side, the soldier maintaining his uncompromising march. "No offence, Lieutenant, but I've been on a hiveship." The physicist's voice was stilted with his uneven steps and his eyes flickered to Ford warily, but the dark-skinned young man gave no sign he'd heard him. "It's not an experience I particularly care to repeat." _Far from it._

Ford halted so abruptly that Peter almost banged into him, turning around with a scathing, accusing expression sparking in his eyes. "Here I am busting my ass to get you back to Atlantis and you're standing around complaining," the soldier growled angrily, his mismatched eyes boring into Peter. Peter rested his hands on his hips a second time, studying the leaf-strewn ground guiltily to avoid meeting Ford's reproachful gaze. His head dipped slightly in unconscious acknowledgement, but Ford wasn't done. "I figured you, of all people, would understand." Peter's jaw clenched regretfully and he looked up through his hairline to find Ford looking hurt, pleading, like a scolded puppy. "What's it gonna be?"

_A Wraith hiveship is the last place I want to go._ It had been the site of his nightmares for far too long, made worse by the fact he knew it was _real._ But it was also his best chance of getting back to Atlantis; he knew technology, and it would be a hell of a lot easier – well, more preferable – for him to build something than to slog around collecting rocks, no matter what planet he was on. Besides, this time, he wasn't alone; he wasn't walking ignorantly into danger. Ford was right, he realized shamefully. Avoiding the hiveship wouldn't change the fact it was there; wouldn't change the fact that he knew it, either. Eyes examining the mulch-strewn ground in thought, his chin bobbing slightly to emphasise his words, he asked, "You're certain most of them are hibernating?"

"Positive." Ford answered with a slightly wounded expression, eyeing Peter uncertainly.

This time Peter nodded resolutely, letting out a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding. "Alright."

Instantly an eager grin crawled over the lieutenant's features and he bobbed his head enthusiastically. "Awright, Doc." One brown hand came up and pointed fleetingly in a seemingly random direction, the other bracing the bronze stunner against Ford's shoulder. "This way."

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The corridors were just as he remembered them: the smoothed, creeper-like pillars and walls draped in gowns of membranous cobwebs, the dirt-strewn floor wreathed with chilly mist, dimly lit by blue-tinged orbs and cylindrical yellow stasis modules. But it was more than that; the soft, concurrent murmur that he wasn't sure he actually heard or merely remembered, the menacing closeness of the halls, the echoing sounds that pretended there was distant, ominous life.

Nervously Peter rubbed a sweaty hand on his still-damp jumpsuit, only succeeding in smudging mud over the lines of his palm. He fingered the rubber grip of the handgun Ford had given him, eyes darting around anxiously, his every muscle tense. The lieutenant was in the lead, the Wraith stunner levelled readily from his shoulder, its yellow power cells glowing faintly in the dank air.

The soldier peered cautiously into every shadow, mismatched eyes scanning the shrouded corridors with grim coldness. It was a sight – one of utter efficiency – that had Peter revising his decision. Ford wasn't in the most stable of dispositions, and after having heard his story… Peter didn't like the idea of being in a slumbering hiveship with an addicted Lieutenant Ford.

But he didn't have much choice; he couldn't find the technology alone. If he could contact Atlantis then perhaps he could also convince Ford to return with him. The soldier was starved for understanding and acceptance, and that might be something Peter could give him. He hated this, though. He wasn't a soldier. Give him a technological problem and he was mostly fine; throw him into a skirmish and his lack of knowledge, lack of control, beat at him mercilessly.

They were already deep within the bowels of the hiveship and Peter's nerves were stretched thin. He had to work to keep his breathing calm, but it still sounded uncomfortably loud in the near-silence, interrupted only by the sound of their footsteps and the soft whisper of dreaming Wraith. His shoulders ached with tension, a soft burn spread across his back that was just this side of painful, one that he'd been too occupied to notice much beforehand. Once or twice the physicist found himself wishing he hadn't finished the power bar earlier, the strain making him feel nauseous.

All that was swept away when a third, echoing trail of footfalls reverberated through the thick air. Instantly the two hugged the shadowed wall in the lee of a pitted column, Peter flexing his shaking hands apprehensively and Ford daring quick glances around the cambers of the twisted pillar marking the turn into a new hallway. Abruptly the lieutenant stepped out into the dirt-strewn hallway, the stunner humming as he fired a crackling blue charge towards an unseen target. There was the scrape of booted feet slipping on the loose sand, the heavy thump of a muscular body hitting the ground. Ford paced forward cautiously, the slim stunner held ready, his eyes sparkling with unsettling triumph.

Peter let out a tense breath, still as wound up as a coiled spring, uncomfortably aware of the open space of the looming corridor behind him even as he followed the lieutenant, sweat-laden face turned towards the whispering shroud of darkness. The sudden whine of another lightning-like blast made the physicist jerk, startled, and he spun around before realizing that Ford had merely pumped another, precautionary round into the bleached-out bone of the motionless Wraith's armour. The alien's white hair was fanned out on the thin carpet of soil, the heavily ridged mask veiling the Wraith's face over translucently pale, green-toned skin that bordered on flabby. His arms were outflung, taken by surprise, the stunner lying almost forgotten in blue-tinged shadows lit only by the dim yellow light of the glowing cartridges.

Ford kneeled by the still Wraith, casting an emotionlessly critical, almost scornful, eye over the pale form bathed in pearly fog. Peter barely had time to register the shiver of remembered fear that chilled his skin before it turned to a sick flush as Ford drew a serrated knife with a dull shriek, slashing the Wraith across the throat. The body bucked once, swiftly, limbs spasming over the topsoil in tiny clouds of dust as a plume of pink blood gurgled from the jagged wound, welling in gleaming rivulets that seeped in an opaque cascade down the pallid flesh.

Peter jolted around, his skin prickling with nauseous heat as his wide eyes travelled unseeingly over the curves and gloom of the walls, avoiding the sight which begged his vision. He took in deep, shaky breaths to avoid throwing up, the coppery smell of blood heavy in the air. It wasn't that he hadn't seen injuries before – especially considering that he had occupied the veritable nub of Atlantis, through which he'd seen everything from burns to shattered bones to bullet wounds come through the gate – it was just that, in his tired, hungry state, he hadn't expected the action, hadn't expected the utter callousness with which Ford had killed an unconscious and helpless creature, Wraith or not.

Time stretched and gradually Peter became aware of the mist clutching his stiff clothing, the cold seeping like a living, whispering entity through the corridor, freezing on his flushed skin. The nausea slipped away but left a dull twist in his stomach and he refused to turn around lest he catch sight of the Wraith corpse. Ford's movements, whatever they had been, had gone unheard and unheeded, and for that the scientist was grateful.

"Here, Doc," Ford nudged his arm, making him jump in surprise and whirl about to face the lieutenant. He was sure his sweaty face was pale, his eyes wide, and his gaze swept quickly over the still, green-tinged form swathed in fog lying just beyond. "You okay?" the soldier asked with a tiny furrow of his brow.

Peter's stomach coiled harshly again. _He doesn't see what he did wrong._ The scientist nodded bleakly, jaw clenching, and took the weathered wrist-guard that Ford held out to him. The cold metal was damp with condensation and the inset rainbow surface of the beacon dull, inoperative, in the light.

It wasn't even the fact it _was_ a Wraith – it was Ford. It scared him, seeing that grim expression on the face of the good-natured, boyish young man he'd once known.

Peter stared blindly at the fractured-looking circle cast into the armband, thumb smoothing over the raised edge of the setting, before Ford gestured vaguely over his shoulder, dark eyes still fixed almost worriedly on the scientist. "We should keep moving," he said, his tone authoritative but soft, like he was speaking to a distraught team member.

Peter took another, steadier, breath, tapping the folded underside of the wrist-guard absently against the knuckles of his other hand. "Perhaps we should leave." he suggested cautiously, gazing at Ford to avoid looking at the half-hidden corpse he knew was just out of sight out of the corner of his eye.

Ford looked him up and down suspiciously, as though he were crazy, his features tightening into the semi-hostile expression of accusation. "C'mon, Doc, you're not chickening out on me now." It wasn't hardly a question; more of an order. "Don't you need other stuff? You know, like tools?"

_Perhaps,_ Peter conceded mentally with a quick sigh, his stare moving to the wreathing mist in thought. _Probable, even._

"Besides," Ford added, shifting restlessly, his eyes flickering over the chilly, darkened corridor behind Peter, illuminated only by the soft glow of orange or blue lights. "I only got one serving of the enzyme." His mismatched eyes blinked back to Peter expectantly, almost accusingly. "It'd be stupid to leave now." And with a final look bordering on an outright, challenging glare, he stalked past the fog-cloaked body of the Wraith, ignorant of the worried, appraising gaze that followed him.

For a moment Peter remained, a tower of faded colour in an ocean of pearly mist, bouncing the armband absently in one hand as though weighing down its advantages compared to the peace of mind that leaving would bring. _I can't leave him in here alone. He's not in the best of minds. _Peter's jaw tightened miserably and he tucked the wrist-guard into the looping, knotted arms of his red jumpsuit, still pushed to his waist, before retrieving the polished stunner wrapped in shadows at the edge of the hallway, turning away from the bulk lying motionlessly in the centre of the veiled floor.

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Two Wraith later, Peter huddled gingerly against the damp wall, the stunner cradled in his hands and the yellow glow of the modules illuminating his surroundings dimly through his fingers. The mist coalesced around his thighs but he ignored it, peering through the rippling lines of a shadowed, creeper-twined pillar and into the closed space of the passage ahead. Beside him, Ford was just tucking away two fluid-slick enzyme sacs into one of his many vest pockets, zipping the opening shut with a tug that almost sent his stunner tumbling from his lap to the dirt floor.

"Shouldn't we leave now?" Peter asked cautiously, head turned far enough to the side that he could see the lieutenant's crouched form out of the corner of his eye, back against the slimy wall as though he'd been moulded to the darkness. He heard the slap of Ford's hand on metal as the soldier lifted his own weapon, caught the slight, irritable glare that Ford cast him out of his normal eye. _For goodness' sake._ Peter craned his head to meet Ford's glower evenly, distantly aware of the unnerving washes of murmurs that swept through his mind. "I would think you've gathered enough of the enzyme for now."

Ford shifted uneasily, eyes skittering over the navy-tinged walls, the drifting fog, and away from Peter. "I was kinda hoping you could see me in action a little more." His gaze jerked back to the suddenly dismayed scientist, looking down at the glow of the cells in Peter's weapon. "That way you can vouch for me. For the enzyme."

"For the enzyme," Peter echoed, his dread growing, a tangible entity that clenched its tight fist around him.

Ford looked at him squarely with an intensity that he had never before shown. Confidence, certainty, jubilation; all these and more sparkled in his mismatched eyes, his lips stretched in an eager grin. "Exactly! Can you imagine what would happen if we gave this stuff out? We could have an army that could defeat the Wraith!" His gaze never left an increasingly troubled Peter, oblivious to everything else around him, to the fact that he was clutching Peter's shoulder tightly with a previously animated hand, that he was leaning in with excitement as he spoke, even that Peter winced at the crushing grasp dragging at his aching back. "I didn't say anything about it before, I didn't want to scare you off, but I figured if you came in with me and saw how well I was doing, how much stronger I am, you'd be able to tell Weir that it works."

Peter sighed and twisted into a crouch to face the lieutenant, his stunner leaning upright on his knee. "Lieutenant –" he began regretfully, fearing the soldier's reaction to what he was about to say, because he knew, he could see, that Ford _wasn't_ okay, that he was sick, drugged, and as good as that felt it was _never_ better –

But he was interrupted by the sudden, piercing flash of a crackling stunner-blast, flaring blue light over the dreary corridor as it streaked past Peter's shoulder, sparking over the thin material of his shirt. The physicist jerked away with a gasped cry, collapsing against the rough wall even as the bolt exploded against the far end of the corridor. The stunner clattered from his momentarily numb hands as Ford cursed, eyes flickering between the ethereal figures in the distance and Peter's pale, sweaty face. "Doc?"

Peter couldn't answer; his breath was ripped away by the burning that swelled over his shoulders, stabbing deeper into his chest like spikes as his limbs spasmed uncontrollably with the needles that prickled over his skin. Ford's eyes widened in revolted disbelief when he saw a wire-thin lattice of black lines begin to spider-web their way up Peter's neck, looking so soft and faint he felt he could almost brush them off as he would any cobweb.

"Alright, Doc," the lieutenant said shakily as Peter caught his ragged breath, taking in uneven gulps of air, his eyes fluttering momentarily closed against renewed throb of his wound and the pound of his head. If he'd had the energy he would've thrown up. "You've convinced me. Let's get outta here."

It had taken only moments, moments in which a dawning realization gripped the trembling physicist, that whatever injury he'd sustained in the desert was much, much worse than he'd thought, in which the Wraith had approached but were not quite past the creeper-like pillars enough to get a clear shot; and Peter forced his weakened body to move, scrambling through the chilly mist in the opposite direction with a wary and readied Ford retreating after him.

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"You okay, Doc?" Ford demanded quickly without looking, hefting the bronze stunner reassuringly and his gaze raking the tree line beyond the draping gown of moss that coated the thick branch he was crouched behind. Jaw clenched tightly against his exhaustion, against his nausea and pain and the image of Ford's shocked expression imprinted in his mind, Peter unwisely shook his head. A moment later he was forced to shut his eyes and take a deep, steadying breath to avoid the whirl of searing dizziness threatening to take him into oblivion. As far as he was concerned, the cradle of spongy bark was comfortable enough to sleep in; but there were other things to consider. Like the fact that the Wraith had set off screeching alarms that had awoken the entire hiveship. And the fact that half of said hiveship were now drifting through the enclosed undergrowth of the muddy fens searching for them. Why the natives had ever decided to live on the Wraiths' back porch was beyond him.

An interesting conundrum to consider. Later.

A bolt of blue lightning whooshed past, making Peter flinch automatically back into the rotting tree and forcing a hiss of pain from his lips when his aching back complained against being pressed into the rough wood. Ford twisted, levelling out the stunner over the curve of the bough at the Wraith distant and ethereal amid the draping foliage, firing off a burst of his own flickering blasts. "C'mon." Ford pushed himself to his feet, the damp bark flaking off and sprinkling to the ground as he turned to flee. Peter levered himself up, stumbling a little over the marshy, uneven ground as he followed. The stumble turned into a stagger when his vision seared white, blinding him and making him reel dizzyingly; but then he felt a firm grip around his arm, felt it lead him strongly, almost callously, in the correct direction.

"The stargate's not too far off," Ford was saying when Peter managed to refocus his attention, but the scientist didn't try to break free of the soldier's grasp. It was practically the only thing holding him up. "I've got an address it should be safe enough to gate to." The lieutenant's grip loosened as his gaze flickered around the oppressive foliage for approaching Wraith, tugging the scientist brusquely through a shallow stream of grungy water. The dull surroundings offered nothing and soon his pace picked up again, but now Peter managed to keep time, leaning on Ford to compensate for his rubbery legs. "When we get there, you dial it up and go through. No waiting. I'll be right behind you."

They ducked beneath the reaching, smooth mottled branch of a creeper-twisted tree, clambering between the pillar-like roots stretching to the mulch-strewn ground. Ford examined the dull, enveloping horizon carefully before signalling for a halt and Peter leaned gratefully against one of columns, revelling in the coolness of the tree's flesh against his fevered, itchy skin. Absently he touched the folded metal wrist-guard and the few thin rods of hard bone-like material that he'd scavenged off a Wraith's armour to use as tools as though reassuring himself they were still tucked carefully away. "D'you remember P3M –" Ford cut off, his lips moving as he mouthed the designation under his breath uncertainly, his mind racing to get it right. "P3M-736?"

The name made Peter's tired eyes raise, sparking a memory from a time just before his 'death'.

_Peter watched the shining glyphs as they scrolled down the thin, shimmering laptop screen, flashing past quickly beside a right-hand box that contained minute text describing each planet that the addresses denoted. Movement made his head lift in time to see Rodney bound up the curving, crimson-stepped stairway leading down a level, curling in a line of thin posts beside the silver wall housing the jumper bay. "What've we got?" the chief scientist demanded, seeing Peter's attention flicker from the monitor and coming to his side, hands resting easily on his hips._

_Peter traced the line of gate addresses, his own gaze shifting back to his task. "These are all the newest addresses we managed to sift from the database," he explained._

"_Hmn." Rodney leaned over Peter's blue-clad shoulder, one hand resting on the back of the Englishman's metal chair and the other taking his weight on the incised maroon metal of the console, fingers tapping impatiently on the dull surface. "Anything interesting?"_

"_I'm afraid not," Peter answered with a tiny smile crinkling his lips. He knew that when Rodney said 'interesting' he meant 'strange power sources'. "But some of the planets do have subjects worthy of notice." A single tap of the keyboard maximised a specific address, a 3D blueprint of an unexplored planet rotating on the left-hand side of the screen as the text accompanying it scrolled down beside it, framed by the customary shimmering border. "This one, for instance. The UV radiation is unusually high; too high for any wildlife to survive for very long, but the flora has thrived in spite of it."_

"_Wait a minute," Rodney interrupted, straightening so his hands could gesture in a punctuation of his words. "What do you mean by 'unusually high'?" Peter raised his eyebrows in slight incredulity, his dark, amused eyes turning upward to regard his superior. Rodney caught his look and his hands slapped down to his grey slacks, his expression turning defensive. "What? I didn't come all the way out here to die a slow, painful death from cancer."_

_Peter chuckled silently. "You'd be fine there for a day or so, more than long enough to take some samples," he reassured the Canadian, leaning on his elbows on the inset space below the humming crystals of the console, his fingers curled in the air over the smooth keyboard._

"_McKay!" A familiar holler echoed from across the other side of the gateroom and Rodney looked up with a vaguely surprised expression, having forgotten about the briefing he was already late for, his lopsided mouth already parted to answer Peter's comment._

"_Fine," he cut off whatever he'd been planning to say with a slight jerk of his head, his shoulders relaxing. He started to move across red-lined floor, Peter bracing one arm against the panel-lit back of the console to follow him, before he turned on his heel to finish his order, hands stabbing once again at the air. "Just – make sure we're not the ones who go there, okay? The last thing we need to worry about is me getting cancer or something."_

_Peter nodded once, over his shoulder, and Rodney mouthed a 'yeah' almost to himself, as if confirming that he'd just said everything he wanted to say, twisting mid-stride towards the glass-flanked bay leading across to the conference room. It was only then that Peter allowed the mirthful smile to cross his features, shaking his head a little as he turned back to the monitor to file the address away for an upcoming mission. Sergeant Bates' team could handle a little radiation…_

Peter blinked and nodded shortly, swallowing through the unexpected lump in his throat. That had been just about the last time he'd had a meaningless banter with Rodney before they'd discovered the Wraith were coming… unless you wanted to count their conversations aboard the satellite. "I know the address."

The last word was almost lost in the high, familiar keen of two Wraith darts that shrieked overhead, dappled streaks of contoured blue-and-grey bone above the thickly patched canopy. "You're gonna need it," Ford replied, craning his head to follow the vessels' path, the stunner cocked automatically to aim at them. "Let's go."

It was funny what impending doom could do to you. Grimly Peter pushed off from the arcing root-pillar, shoving aside the dizziness lurking around the corners of his vision that had faded from its original intensity, and followed the lieutenant's head-jerk towards the sweeping forms of the tree line.

They fled, pressured by the screaming vessels overhead and the unearthly figures stalking inexorably closer, the shifting pall of Wraith-created 'shadows' wisping about them tauntingly. It was an almost desperate, last-ditch sprint towards the stargate, crackling nets of energy lashing around them, dissipating with arcs of blue light into the deep curves and dips of the creeper-like trees, shredding leaves and moss as they passed. The undulating white light of the darts' culling beams swept over foliage and marsh, spreading in flashing, wandering patterns, not seeming to train upon the two with any accuracy.

The stargate's misty lake swelled ahead of them, a swirl of drifting fog enshrining the square flagstone dais that rose in the centre. The elegantly rounded DHD was nestled comfortably at the base of the water-licked steps, seeming to wait in anticipation as ripples lapped its curved metal side.

A culling beam raked the edge of the mud-slick bank, over the tarn, making the water churn and thin vines whirl in spirals of whipping tendrils. Peter struggled to halt before he could run into the luminescent shaft of light, his heart pounding in his ribs, his muscles shrieking in complaint. His scuffed shoes slipped in the slimy mire, furrowing long trenches down the slope as he slithered wildly towards the surface of the lake. The beam winked out of existence as he hit the water, engulfed in a spray of droplets before he found his feet on the silted lagoon floor. Above him Ford stood upon the ridge, aiming the long stunner carefully at a streamlined dart wheeling piercingly through the overcast sky.

_Dial, and go straight through. _Peter kept Ford's order in mind, trusting that the lieutenant would hold off the Wraith so that Peter could do so, that he would be right behind him. The murky water dragged at him, waist-high and cold, swirled with thin mist that faded his light-coloured shirt into the background but did nothing to hide the rippling trail he made as he coursed towards the DHD.

Distantly he registered the chilly touch of the fog, the scream of the darts and electric smack of stunner blasts, focussed on keeping his feet. Then, "Doc!"

The shout came from behind him at the same time as a distorted, high-pitched whine and Peter instinctively twisted around, unaware of the whisper-thin lines moulded to his skin that moved easily with the shift of his muscles as though they belonged there. The transparent swell of a culling beam swept towards him, flowing over the shifting surface of the water.

Without thinking Peter threw himself backwards, swallowed in a lash of spray as the shaft flicked past and vanished, chased by the flashing shadow of a dart. A second later he resurfaced, spluttering, his clothes clinging to him wetly and dark hair dripping. It was a moment before his scrabbling shoes found purchase on the slippery bottom, hands slapping at the water's surface, and a second later he'd reached the round, sloping bulb of the DHD.

With little effort the familiar images of the planet's address came to mind as he reached for the rising levels of the address crystals. The smooth transparent panels depressed with familiar clunks, the lined symbols lighting up blue behind them, before his fingers straddled the unlit dome rising from the centre and pressed it to complete the sequence. The triangular chevrons of the looming gate illuminated, the wormhole activating in a whoosh of explosive light, blooming outward before withdrawing into a rippling circle of the bright event horizon.

"Go, Doc!" He heard before he could turn around, fully prepared to wait for Ford to cross the turbulent channel before vanishing through the gate, and the desperate authority in the lieutenant's voice was unmistakable.

Reluctantly he obeyed, his hand traced fleetingly over the rounded border of the DHD as he passed, the aesthetic ridges rough beneath his touch before he escaped the rancid grasp of the lake. He left wet footsteps on the damp, moss-swathed stone as he hurtled up the steps, shoulders prickling with tense anticipation and lungs complaining.

Just as he crossed the threshold he turned, catching a glimpse of the scene across the water: Ford, dark head half turned towards him, checking his progress, the bronze stunner still levelled at his shoulder; a jagged dart swooping low over the rustling trees, the culling beam flashing into a translucent tidal wave of light that cut towards him. And for just a moment, he thought Ford looked at it, saw it, and waited calmly for it to claim him before the wormhole swept the scientist away.

A second later Peter re-emerged, stumbling back to put some distance between himself and the gate across a scrubby, grass-tousled clearing. Instantly he was struck by the bright sunlight, warm though not stiflingly so like the desert; but his uncertain gaze was on the shimmering stargate, casting dappled blue light over the dry meadow. It disengaged with another whoosh, blue flames that wisped into nothingness around the edge of the device, and then it was silent.

Peter watched it disbelievingly, eyes wide, breathing heavy with fatigue, his back aching and stomach clenching with tense misery, his pounding head leaving him feeling faint. He was alone.

Again.


	5. The Price of Realization

**A/N: **_Gwah, this took longer than I wanted. This'll teach me to write a WIP…anyway, thanks for all your glowing reviews, and an extra big thanks to Fanwoman for pointing that stuff out! Repetition is one of my pet peeves, I dunno how those managed to get in there – as for the GDO thing, I knew I'd forgotten something when I was posting the chapter! I had much the same idea as you and I'd been brainstorming ways around it before it slipped my mind. The previous chappie is now updated accordingly. There's one reference to the changes in here, but it should be fine. If anyone's still confused, just read Fanwoman's review._

_Enough babbling. This chappie has spoilers for 'Trinity'. Call it my Christmas present; hope you had (or are having) a good one!_

_EDIT: Not much changed here, mostly just Lorne's name and the details of his team-mates. _

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** IV **

**THE PRICE OF REALIZATION**

Not again.

_The scene was familiar, repetitive: the bristling satellite framed against the twinkle of silver stars, facing the looming, grey-blue ships in the distance. His body was tense, afraid, determined; his voice was calmer than he felt, portraying a confidence that proved to be useless._

Please, _Rodney begged, knowing what was to come, knowing all too well what would happen – what _had_ happened – but this time awake enough to separate himself from the memory._

"_I'm sorry."_

"_Get us back to that satellite –"_

_White lights flashed in the corner of his eye, the triangular DHD crystals backlit by their symbols as he turned away, towards Miller, who bent his mousy-haired head over the controls of the sloping bronze console –_

White lights. Flashing. Puddlejumper lights. But puddlejumper lights didn't flash. They glowed. Puddlejumper lights… didn't flash…

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Radek Zelenka paced down the crimson-floored hallway, his black datapad cradled securely in the crook of his arm, its screen lit up blue and pink in the familiar colours of the Ancient mainframe. In his other hand was a slim grey pointer, clasped loosely between his fingers as he absently pushed his rounded wire-rim glasses higher up on his nose, peering through the lenses at the glowing monitor.

He hardly saw where he was going; a common state of mind for half the inhabitants of the city. His destination didn't really matter in this case, however. What mattered was what was showing on the display and what he'd be able to do with data. So he didn't notice when his feet took him on a familiar, well-paced route, one he had followed many times and only recently taken to occasionally avoiding.

It was a moment before he realized that he was nearing the familiar bronze door, the apex inset in a vague imitation of Atlantis's command tower, the decorative incised panels darkened in the dim glow of the disk-like crystals the city used as light. It was flanked by a drooping potted plant and one of the low, white-cushioned seats so often found in the halls. His steps slowed hesitantly, his gaze rising from the smooth monitor to flicker towards the silently looming entrance, nondescript and almost unnoticeable in the light brown wall. That was when he stopped, debating the empty passage ahead and the closed door, his fingers kneading the top edge of his datapad uncertainly, looped by the material handle.

_I thought you had forgiven him, yes?_ He chided himself, his black sneakers shifting uncomfortably on the crimson floor as he lingered indecisively outside the laboratory. Rodney's laboratory.

Ever since they'd returned from Earth the Canadian had seemed to pull away and become more focussed on himself. It was a Rodney McKay that Radek hadn't seen since he first knew the man, before he'd managed to wriggle his way through Rodney's inner defences and become his friend. None of them were entirely sure why; Sheppard might have been able to find out, but he appeared obsessed with discovering the fate of his former lieutenant and whether it was the fact he didn't have time for Rodney or something else, he hadn't tried.

Perhaps Rodney would have worked out whatever was bothering him by himself eventually… if he hadn't made a mistake.

A big mistake.

And perhaps things wouldn't have become as strained as they had if he hadn't played on his friends' trust, then rejected them brutally when they opposed him. And _then_ made his mistake.

_Enough. He has apologised. There is nothing to be gained by continuing things as they are. He is feeling guilty, you know this; when has he not?_ Radek huffed a quick sigh, steeling himself, and moved, treading carefully towards the entryway as his hand flickered automatically up to his glasses once again.

At his approach the tall bronze door slid open with the soft hiss of hydraulics, revealing behind it a decent-sized room. Immediately before him was a long table, cluttered with Earth equipment that often seemed unwieldy and uncouth next to the simple elegance of the Ancients' technology. Ranging the smooth, square-framed walls were brightly-coloured boxes, often stacked in unsteady piles or crammed into slim metal racks, and tall processing banks, standing patiently between clay-textured pillars that emitted a dim, ethereal glow. Where there was space were several thin desks holding the deep shelves in which Rodney kept his few books and the submitted research of the other fields of science, from tightly lidded tubs of chemicals to rock samples. In the central rear of the chamber was a sturdy metal table bearing the ominous, rounded form of an EMP generator, set against a thick, incised grey pillar which was embedded with columns of the white light-crystals.

For a moment Radek didn't see anyone and his wavy-haired head craned to peek around the corners, the muted lights casting shadows into the wrinkles of his long-sleeved blue shirt. Then his eyes settled on the tall, cone-headed lamp illuminating the long desk, one of the ones that many scientists used to support the faint crystals.

And Radek saw him: the dull blue of the shirt stretched over his shoulders blending him into the subdued lights, half-hidden by the stacks of equipment and technology. He was hunched over his laptop, cheek pressed firmly into the flat keyboard and hands curled almost protectively around the slim grey computer in a deep slumber.

The Czech hesitated, knowing that Rodney usually forgot to sleep and if he ever dropped off in his laboratory it usually meant that he needed it. But there was something about the scene – the lines of his bleak face, his grimly set jaw – that made Radek skirt the table, datapad brushing his beige pants, hand outstretched to wake him up. Rodney had enough to worry about without having to worry about dreams too.

As soon as Radek's hand had touched his shoulder, the grey stylus still caught securely in the Czech's fingers, Rodney's head jerked up and his blue eyes snapped open, fists clenching so violently on the desktop that he almost sent a hard-edged black case to the floor. One hand moved automatically to wipe at the drool glistening on his chin, eyes flickering unseeingly over the laptop's blue-and-pink tinged screen before coming to rest on Radek's worried face.

To the engineer's surprise, animated realization suddenly dawned in Rodney's eyes, smoothing the grim lines and the dazed veil. "Peter." was all he said, all he seemed to be able to say, his eyes gazing past Radek to something only he could see.

_My God._ Radek stared, knowing that Rodney didn't see him, his own throat suddenly constricted with lingering grief. _This is what has troubled him all this time?_ The pieces of a scattered puzzle suddenly fit together. Of all the members of his team that Rodney had lost, Peter was the one he'd been closest to. He had been able to infuriate the Englishman in a way that no one else could – save perhaps Sergeant Bates – but despite the Canadian's barbs Peter had almost always maintained his courteous dignity, which in turn had frustrated Rodney.

So when Rodney had pulled away… it was a result of the proverbial straw. Radek didn't know whether it had been to protect himself from the potential loss of another friend or to protect his friends from what he perceived as his own failings, and he decided it didn't matter. Either way, it explained a great deal.

"Rodney…" Radek started, not knowing what he was meant to say, his own body tense against the reality of the event. He'd been good friends with Peter too. Rodney's gaze refocussed on the Czech as the shorter man swallowed nonexistent words, looking down to the crimson floor.

"He's alive, Radek," The words were short, clipped with certainty and excitement, but they made the engineer's head jolt up in startled, worried disbelief to meet utterly confident, utterly certain eyes. "He wasn't in the satellite." Rodney continued breathlessly, one hand punctuating his words with restless energy. "They used a culling beam to take him off." A grin spread over his face, making his features glow with elation, but Radek's blue eyes fluttered closed in despair, breathing out a despondent sigh. "What?"

"Rodney," the engineer began softly, gently, meeting the Canadian's confused expression, "…even _if,"_ he emphasised the word, his heart clenching at Rodney's slowly fading jubilation. "…they used a culling beam to take him off the satellite, the chances he is still alive after all these months is practically nonexistent." Rodney's gaze unfocussed and, seeing the bleak, grief-stricken realization in his eyes, Radek felt like crying. It was like losing Peter all over again. "And even if he is, the chance of us _finding_ him is even less."

Rodney's lopsided mouth thinned, clenched, his features falling into that familiar, closed arrogance which hid all of his compassion; but this time it seemed somehow melancholy, uncertain.

Before he could say anything the gateroom alarms sounded, pealing through the city's speakers in the familiar serenade of an unscheduled offworld activation. Simultaneously the two men looked skyward and the noise spurred them into action, dutifully following the klaxons' summons with a rush of adrenaline that swept away all other considerations.

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Rodney's legs pumped, his dusky shoes thudding on the silver steps as he raced towards the control room, fingers clenching around the metal railing on one side, flashing from one slim pole to the next on the other. Radek pounded up behind him, fingers twined in the fabric of his datapad's handle, its smooth back pressed to his forearm as he held it out of the way.

They emerged from the hollow stairwell, beneath the bridging curve of its twin leading into the circular jumper bay, just in time to catch the muffled whoosh of an engaging stargate as the event horizon splashing invisibly over the back of the crystalline shield, dyed in icy shades of blue and pink.

"What's up?" Rodney demanded, slightly breathless, passing by the identical maroon consoles sitting up on the central dais in favour of the arc of smaller ones settled before the wide, glass windows looking out onto the spacious, crimson-stepped floor of the gateroom. Doctor Elizabeth Weir turned at his voice, slender eyebrows drawn forward slightly in an expression of tentative consternation, arms crossed over her stomach and the loose curls of her dark hair swaying around the thin shaft of the radio tracing the line of her jaw.

"We don't know yet," she answered, shifting her position restlessly as Radek took a place in front of the shimmering blue-and-green monitor displaying Atlantis's mainframe, suspended at the back of the dais. He waited patiently between the consoles, his datapad held snugly to his side and the light reflecting off his glasses, silent as Elizabeth continued. "It's from P3M-736, but we finished the survey there ages ago."

Beside Elizabeth, Colonel John Sheppard leaned on one of the incised consoles, one hand draped casually at his pocket, his military black-and-grey jacket parted to show the black shirt underneath. His dark eyes were surveying the flicker of blue light bathing the maroon-lined floor over the railing of the sharply lined balcony before him, thin features relaxed but alert. "Are we getting anything?" He cast the enquiry towards Bryan Grimault, the command sergeant usually in charge of the gate, with a sideways jerk of his head.

"Nothing, sir," was the answer from the tawny-haired Canadian, his eyes riveted to the laptop screen perched on the smooth, white-gripped counter below the layered control crystals. There was a slight frown evident in his tone as he continued, "But we are getting some unusual interference."

"What? Let me see that!" In two steps Rodney was behind the sergeant and without waiting for a reply had leaned over him, studying the scrolling icons on the thin monitor. A second later and his shoulders dipped, head bobbing in the familiar movement that passed for an eye-roll. "Oh, please, you call that interference?" His tone was as derisive as anyone had ever heard it, causing Elizabeth to cock her head at him in warning, completely unnoticed. "It's probably a result of inferior people such as yourself –"

Rodney cut off, suddenly stilling, his blue eyes staring hard at the flickering screen. Nonplussed by his unexpected silence, Sergeant Grimault cast him a questioning glance as Elizabeth exchanged her own uneasy look with Sheppard, taking a deep, steadying breath.

"Rodney?"

"It's not interference," Rodney answered Elizabeth's query almost absently, as though unaware he was even speaking, oblivious to the half a dozen querying, semi-patient heads raised expectantly his way. "It's a distress call." He raised a pale face, looking out over the thin railing towards the rippling blue horizon of the stargate. "On an Earth frequency."

Elizabeth blinked, the words taking a second to sink in before her lips parted in surprise and her head snapped towards the stargate with a ruffle of dark curls, her arms unfolding from their cradle against her red shirt. In the same instant Sheppard jerked upright, twisting to glance fleetingly over his shoulder at Rodney as though to reassure himself that the scientist meant what he said.

"It has to be Ford," He turned his intense gaze to Elizabeth, hands loose at his sides, ready and waiting for the command he was sure was going to come. "We don't have anyone else out there and he's the only one who'd know about P3M-736 anyway." Surreptitiously Radek glanced to Rodney, who'd straightened and allowed the sergeant to retake control over the laptop, but the physicist's expression showed nothing and he didn't mention his dream-induced theory.

Instead he began, "Need I remind you, Colonel, that the last time we saw him he was jumping into a Wraith culling beam. Now, call me crazy, but I'd say the likelihood of his surviving that would be next to zero, not to mention the serious implications on his state of sanity –"

The babble of words was cut off by the glower on Sheppard's face, and with a flicker of his eyes Rodney took in the warning look directed at him by Elizabeth and the incredulous expressions turned towards him by one or two of the control room staff. His expression changed from superior to something meeker, humbled, as his hands slapped down to his slacks from where they'd crossed unconsciously across his chest. "But there's always a chance, right?" He managed a small, uncertain smile and the others turned away, apparently not noticing as he released a short sigh.

"Alright, John," Elizabeth agreed, her gaze skittering over the tinted floor in fleeting thought. "But be careful," Her hazel eyes bored into him gravely through the thick lock of hair that habitually fell over her sight when she bobbed her head firmly to reinforce her words. "We want to bring everyone back unharmed this time."

"Right," Sheppard nodded sharply in answer, his expression already miles away and attesting to the fact that he'd hardly heard her, hurrying to escape the glass-walled control room and get geared up. "McKay."

"Right." Rodney echoed in a much surer tone than before, nodding rapidly to Radek as he made to follow the colonel. Briefly Elizabeth met the Czech's worried eyes with a troubled gaze of her own, her arms moving to cross over her stomach once again as she turned to watch the stargate disengage with a whoosh of fading blue flame.

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Peter trailed back towards the shallow cave where he'd taken shelter, his scuffed shoes occasionally catching on the thick, low-slung foliage as he stepped uncertainly through meandering pseudo-paths. The sunlight was dazzling, casting a golden film over the forest that leeched the colours from the surroundings.

He'd spent time interminable trying to reconfigure the beacon, the fiddly mechanics contained mostly within a circle the thickness of a pencil, made more difficult by the unnerving numbness of his fingers, but finally it was done. It proved to be a hell of a lot easier than lugging several dozen decent-sized rocks to the stargate from the cave; truth to tell, he didn't even know if he was up to constant, strenuous labour – not right now, at any rate. And then he'd suffered quite a scare upon realizing that there wasn't a DHD anywhere in sight… until he'd found it beneath the nearest tree, so overgrown with weeds and fallen debris that it was hidden to anyone except a determined hunter.

Now all he had to do was wait.

His callused hand came up, automatically brushing an arching chain of leaves away from his care-worn face, already red from the harsh rays of the sun. His fingers lingered on the rough network of lines that crept over his jaw, only just touching his cheek and almost hidden beneath the bristles of his beard. But they were there nonetheless and he suppressed a shudder, recalling the eerie black web he'd seen etched into his skin, reflected in a shallow stream when he'd gone to scrub off the lingering grime of the swamp.

He could trace its progress, even over the scant day he'd been on P3M-736, and now every prick of the pins and needles was marked for what it was: the spread of some alien virus. It crawled down his arms, now, occasionally stabbing painfully deep into his chest. It overruled his hunger, his nausea, even his exhaustion – but only occasionally, and they seemed to him to be symptoms of something much, much worse.

Something that reminded him eerily of Ford's drug addiction.

He tried not to dwell on it, knowing that his best – if only – chance of finding a cure of any kind was to get back to Atlantis; but it still made him remember a time when he'd gambled on who brought back the next injury or illness, as opposed to returning with one himself.

If it worked.

_Of course it worked._ He reprimanded himself. He knew his own abilities, and after he'd worked out the basics of Wraith technology it had been relatively easy – if time-consuming – to make the changes he needed. No, it was more Atlantis's presence he doubted… looking back on Ford and his rapid changes of mood, his blasé caringness, had Peter doubting some of the lieutenant's words. Besides, the soldier had admitted himself that it had been a while since he saw his former team-mates; something may have happened between now and then…

They were thoughts that Peter refused to entertain. He had done so for too many of them in the past, and would tolerate it no more.

His shoes crunched on the scattered rubble of the cave, shadow wavering over the larger rocks before melding with the shade beneath the low crags of the ceiling. The far wall of the cave was bathed in dim light, flickering across the deep shrouds in the crags, and Peter frowned. _The beacon shouldn't be doing that – unless –_ Dread suddenly clutching his limbs, he hurried his step, ducking though the rough entrance and almost slipping on the wreckage.

In the dim light of the cave, settled against the inner wall around the dusky corner, a light blinked relentlessly, flashing from red and green and then back again in chirruping repetition.

_Damn!_

Instantly Peter was there, hefting one of the fist-sized stones and bringing it down upon the beacon with a crack that jarred his hand. The device tumbled from its perch, its innards flailing as it lost the support of the rocks that had previously been maintaining the tenuous connection between wires. With the chink of metal it landed amongst the debris-strewn floor, winking incessantly up at Peter with mocking hues on its chipped and fragmented surface.

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The puddlejumper glided smoothly from the glowing blue event horizon with a ripple, arcing gracefully over the nearest trees. The pleasant hum of the activated technology softened as it settled easily in the grass, the silver of its curved, cylindrical exterior reflecting the bright sun and the incised lines sweeping from bow to stern steeped in shadow.

With a high-pitched sound bordering on a whine the rear hatch opened, forming a study, black-gripped ramp. Colonel Sheppard was the first to emerge from the close interior, squinting up at the sun with a growing sense of irritation. As if he hadn't had enough of the too-bright sun the _last_ time.

"Where to, McKay?" Sheppard asked as the physicist exited the puddlejumper behind him, studiously ignoring the Canadian when he squinted apprehensively up at the sky, one hand shading his eyes and the other cupped around a transparent white Life-Signs Detector. Sheppard had flatly refused to give McKay time to get one of the bright rubber Haz-Mat suits, knowing that they were likely to be subjected to a unending plethora of complaints about sensitive skin and the danger of UV radiation, but if it wasn't one thing it was another; the colonel had heard from Lorne how the physicist complained about the heat on their previous visit. If it _was_ Ford sending the distress call, they needed to hurry before he changed his mind.

"Um," Rodney glanced down at the green-tinged screen of the LSD, absently thinking how inappropriate the name was. It did so much more than just detecting life-signs. It figured that an ignorant grunt like Ford would be so short-sighted as to name it something like that…

He felt a guilty pang. Ford was far from 'just an ignorant grunt'. Or had been, at least… nowadays Rodney couldn't help but doubt his sanity, no matter what Sheppard said. Oh, he still hoped, deep down, that perhaps they could get him back and everything would be all right, but the greater part of him, having spent several hours with the frenetic lieutenant, was already steeling himself against the loss…

"McKay!"

Rodney jumped, startled out of his thoughts, to find Sheppard glowering at him over his vested shoulder, the dark brown of his scruffy hair highlighted by the sun and the black fabric of his BDUs looking almost like an washed-out grey. "Oh." With a sharp little flick the scientist pointed towards the illuminated, pale forest, studying the white circle blipping on the display. "That way."

"Stay in radio contact," Sheppard ordered with a cursory sideways jerk towards Major Lorne, who was glancing around unhappily at the familiar setting from the threshold of the puddlejumper.

"Yes, sir," Lorne answered, gesturing for his own team to take up defensive positions around the now-silent vessel as Sheppard turned and moved stiffly past the trees speckled across the weedy field, the sleek P90 that was clipped securely to the front of his bulky Kevlar vest aimed defensively at the rocky ground.

As she passed him Teyla cast Rodney a tiny smile through her auburn hair, her gold-toned skin lit up by the sunlight, but the scientist didn't notice. Instead he wandered sightlessly after the two, oblivious to Ronon as the tall Satedan brought up the rear, his cream-coloured coat fluttering at his ankles and his intense green eyes scanning the familiar surroundings.

Behind them Lorne surveyed the dull field distastefully, brow furrowing slightly over blue eyes as he gripped his firearm reassuringly.

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"This is the way to the cave," Ronon noted blandly, glancing about at the bright foliage as they tracked towards their destination with varying degrees of concentration.

"Hmn," Rodney looked up from his study of the glowing LSD for the first time since they'd left the stargate behind. "Makes sense, since it's the closest shelter to the gate and any _intelligent_ being," Here he aimed a dirty look at Sheppard's back, "…would take cover from this kind of sun."

"Any _intelligent_ being would be smart enough to shut up before someone kicks their ass," Sheppard shot back without turning around, his P90 levelled at the waist, carefully scanning the translucently-bright foliage ahead. Rodney returned grumpily to the rectangular LSD just in time to see the blinking white circle flicker and die.

"Oh." He slowed to tap ineffectually at the green-tinged screen with one finger, all the petulance flying from his expression to be replaced by puzzlement and a tad of concern.

He didn't notice that Sheppard had stopped short and spun around upon hearing his quiet exhale, hazel eyes locked on the scientist. At least, not until Sheppard snapped in a tiny explosion of breath, "McKay!" Teyla glanced between the two with a ripple of her long hair, her soft brown eyes worried, before settling with wary concern on Rodney as Ronon came up behind him with long-legged strides, the stiff, grey-dyed leather adorning his shoulders looking pale in the light.

"It stopped," Rodney uttered quietly, his brow furrowed in thought.

"That's bad, right?" Sheppard demanded, stepping quickly towards Rodney in a flurry of bouncing leaves, his gun once again lowered to the mulchy ground. "Is that bad?"

Rodney rolled his eyes skyward with a longsuffering sigh. "I'd love to tell you, Colonel, but I'm not _there,_ am I? I'm all the way over _here,_ so unless you have some x-ray glasses with which I can see all the way over _there,_ I'm as much in the dark as you are." His eyes travelled over the bright canopy, fingers flicking in the air to gesture at the layer of illuminated foliage. "Or, well, as much in the really, really radiated sunlight as you are…"

John had already stopped listening. Grimly he turned, marching past Teyla back the way he'd just come, his thin face set with bleak determination. "We need to pick up the pace."

He didn't say anything else. Didn't voice his fears that perhaps, if it was Ford out there, he'd changed his mind or something had happened to him. He didn't need to. All of his team understood his need to bring that once-boisterous young lieutenant home – even McKay.

Even though he spluttered and argued and complained the whole way, an unending rant that had somehow rubbed on John's nerves more than usual after their return from Earth.

And then there had been Arcturus…

Though that was the last thing he wanted – needed – to think about.

_Ford._ He reminded himself quickly, feeling that twist of hurt in his stomach; the one connected to disappointment, to anger, to betrayal. _Think of Ford. We can get through to him. We _have_ to get through to him…_

And before he knew it they were there, pacing cautiously towards the threshold of the forest, leaking nature's green finery over the coarse boulders of a rough, weed-poked 'lane' leading to the cave. "Ronon, take point," John murmured into his radio, hunched cautiously over his shiny P90 as he halted beside one of the sun-faded rocks, scanning the moss-gowned stones and drooping ferns to be seen arrayed on the other side of the clearing. Without speaking Teyla covered his flank, Rodney wavering behind uncertainly as Ronon strode forward with soft footsteps through the sun-bathed archway of pale terracotta rock.

Cautiously, swiftly, John twisted his weapon towards the curling border of the woods around the rubble-strewn clearing, covering Ronon as he made warily for the bowing entrance of the darkened cave.

All of them heard the sound at the same time – that of shoes scraping on rock within the cavern – but Ronon was there first. He swung around the corner in a swirl of his long coat, the shadows darkening his chocolate-coloured mane of dreadlocks and the dull orange power module of his long, square-muzzled pistol glowing dimly as he levelled it calmly at an unseen target.

"Wait!" came the shout in a vaguely familiar voice, smooth but urgent, echoing slightly into the depths of the cave. In half a dozen quick steps John was there, spinning around the corner with the P90 raised so he could peer critically down the sight.

It pointed unwaveringly towards the man half-hidden in the shadows, seeming black after the bright, colour-leeching sun, his hands raised with his palms outward to show that he was unarmed. For a moment John could only see an outline, but then the colonel's vision adjusted and he made out the faded blue and red of the man's grimy clothes.

"Major Sheppard," That familiar voice came again as he heard Teyla and Rodney come up behind them, cautiously stepping over the loose gravel and stones.

_How does he know my name?_

The words almost sounded like a question but weren't, should have sounded surprised but instead sounded resigned, pleading… relieved!

Jaw set tensely, John flicked on the slim flashlight strapped to the top of his weapon that pierced through the shadows, bathing the thin, bearded face of the stranger and making him wince back. For a moment the Atlantean soldier didn't see anyone he knew in the tanned features, the darkly circled eyes, blinking to adjust to the sudden change in illumination. On the contrary, the black lattice of lines spider-webbing up the man's neck made the colonel shudder, his skin crawling in revulsion as the flashlight's beam settled upon it.

Then, "I don't believe it," Rodney breathed incredulously behind him, and a slight smile twitched the stranger's lips, his brown eyes sparkling tiredly with a gentle, reluctant humour that quickly fled.

And that was where John saw it. His firearm faltered, lowered. "Grodin?" he demanded disbelievingly, dimly aware of Teyla's soft, indrawn breath, Ronon's steady, unblinking gaze and even steadier pistol.

"I was right!" Rodney pushed past the stunned colonel, blue eyes jubilant, grinning as though he'd just won the Nobel Prize. "Zelenka said that – well, he was wrong, I really did see it, they used a culling beam, I worked it out this morning but he said it's been too long – so if you were with the Wraith then how did you escape, did you find anything interesting, did you –"

"Rodney!" Grodin said sharply, callused hands still raised as he cast a tentative, wary glance towards calm Ronon. "We don't have time. The Wraith will be coming down on us at any moment."

His voice was thick, but whether it was from emotion or urgency John didn't know. All he heard was 'Wraith' and snapped out of his shock as Ronon asked with confident aloofness, "How do you know that?" The slightly mocking twist to the Satedan's mouth made him seem like he was enjoying the discomfiture he was causing.

Grodin's eyes flickered towards the twisted wires and machinery scattered unnoticed among the terracotta stones at John's feet. Everyone except Ronon followed his gaze, shifting uncertainly to give room as Rodney reached down and seized the largest piece of scratched, grey debris with the speed of a striking snake. "You tried to reconfigure a Wraith beacon!" he demanded almost shrilly, the chipped armband fumbling in his hands.

John saw the familiar, pearly-white face of a homing device, now dead and shattered beyond repair in sharp, transparently crystalline edges. His stomach clenched, his body tensing with familiar adrenaline. He knew what _that_ meant.

"I didn't have a lot of options at the time!" was Grodin's frustrated, snappy response, his hands lowering slightly with the force of his words. They rose again with an aggravated, indrawn breath as Ronon renewed his grip warningly on the cloth-wrapped handle of the pistol, Grodin eyeing the Satedan charily.

Jittery, anxious, Rodney turned towards John, his voice breathless with urgency. "Colonel, we have to get out of here now!"

John nodded, aware that time was now passing on them. His grasp on the P90 shifted uneasily, almost caressing the black metal it as though in comfort. Anticipating the affirmative Teyla turned to leave the cave, stepping gracefully over the rock bed, her weapon already lifted in readiness in case they were sprung.

"What about him?" Ronon asked calmly, not moving at all, his piercing eyes still fixed to the weary scientist now returning his gaze with something akin to resignation. Teyla stopped short on the threshold between shadow and light, her brown eyes skipping expectantly from Ronon to John, but someone got there first.

"What d'you mean, 'what about him'?" Rodney turned on the tall Satedan, his words coming so fast they were almost a babble and his face pale with apprehension. "He's coming with us!"

"We should stun him just to make sure." Ronon returned easily, but that only solicited a derisive snort and a genuine, full-bodied McKay eye-roll.

"Oh, yes, brilliant, then you can carry him to the stargate while we run for our lives to escape the Wraith." Rodney snapped, hand bobbing restlessly in the air.

"He's right. Stand down." John growled, hardly glancing to either the thickset scientist or the rangy Satedan, but his eyes on the carpeting rubble of the cave floor. Rodney stopped short, looking momentarily surprised, but when Sheppard refused to meet his gaze something like hurt flashed across his features, quickly replaced by lofty superiority, and his hand fell.

There was a moment in which Ronon considered whether or not Sheppard's order was safe to follow before he spun the pistol in his grasp and holstered it in one fluid motion, his green eyes never leaving the quiet physicist.

Peter watched all this with an experienced, keen eye, silently witnessing the exchange and feeling a pang of uncertainty come through the combination of anxiety and exultation that twisted his stomach. What was going on there?

"Major Lorne, we're coming back. Look out for Wraith." Sheppard spoke tersely into his radio, signing off before the major could reply. He turned away with a jerk of his firearm, his hazel eyes skittering grimly over each of them. "Let's get the hell outta here," he offered, steel lacing his words, and Peter couldn't agree more.

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"_Colonel, we've got gate activity!"_ Lorne's voice burst through the radio, but Sheppard didn't even break in stride.

"Copy that," was his only answer, lifting the radio strapped to the front of his vest to his lips. "Stay out of sight."

Strung out in a loose line, with Sheppard leading and Ronon bringing up the rear, they paced quickly over the thin pseudo-trail, weapons scanning the thick, bright green foliage and every nerve alight with anticipation.

They were going at a pretty fast clip; quick enough that Peter began to feel light-headed, stubbornly ignoring the dizziness he knew was sure to come soon. Before, he'd felt almost normal – but that was then. Now, pressed onward by the knowledge of Wraith encroachment, whatever compensations that _thing_ – the bite, the wound, he didn't know what to call it – had made were failing.

Then Sheppard stopped short, his fist jerking up to signal a halt, an instant after the shrill keen of approaching darts rang through the listless, faded woods.

"They're coming this way," Ronon noted almost blandly in the pause, his shaggy head turned upward towards the thin canopy, green eyes searching expectantly for the speeding figures that would pass over them high above. Peter took the opportunity to bend over his knees, taking a few deep breaths to clear his head.

"How astute of you," Rodney snapped, turning slightly to throw a disdainful glare at Ronon over his black-coated shoulder, snarky despite the danger.

"We cannot let them see us," Teyla reminded Sheppard urgently from the centre, gripping her P90 tightly.

"I know," Sheppard said on a grim exhale, already moving forward with quick steps. And with a rising degree of tension, the others followed.

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Major Marcus Lorne shifted uneasily, his soft eyes scanning the dull surroundings and his fingers flexing on the black grip of his weapon. He was standing in the entrance to the cloaked puddlejumper, hidden from view, while the rest of his four-man team were spread out around the colour-leached bushes nearby. The darts had streaked off towards the cave, but they were still near enough for him to register the quiet, high-pitched whine in the background.

That didn't last long.

It was with a tense chill that he realized the sound of the darts was once again approaching. Peeking around the smooth silver frame, knuckles white around the hilt of his gun, Marcus saw familiar white flashes rippling over the still forest in the distance. The uninformed might have thought it was a ripple of heat; reasonable, considering the clear, too-bright skies.

Marcus knew it was the random sweep of culling beams.

His stomach clenched but his jaw was set grimly, ignoring the anxiety twisting his insides. He breathed evenly, deeply, refusing to give it free rein, even though his blue eyes were locked upon the undulating shafts of light meandering over the semi-transparent canopy. Some were drawing closer.

The other dark streaks he could see over the horizon circled away, over the cave.

In a corner of his mind he prayed for Colonel Sheppard and his team; that none of them had been caught by the beams. One hand drifted to the radio strapped snugly to the front of his rough-textured vest, resting on it reassuringly. They were in the forest… they didn't need distractions.

They didn't need to cater to an apprehensive major, fearful for their safety.

Sometimes he hated being a soldier.

And then he lost the chance to think about it, because a dart wheeled towards them with a careening shriek, the culling beam raking the edges of the rocky field and making the thick foliage rustle in its shimmering draught. Marcus' eyes cut sharply towards one of the tall trees dotting the weed-choked clearing, where he could see the form of one of his men crouched under the dappling shadow of the branches. His heart thudded in his ribs as the beam swept closer to the man, huddled against the peeling trunk, but it had barely raked the outer leaves of the splayed boughs before the beam shut off and the dart screamed overhead.

Marcus swallowed through a dry mouth, but his words were calm, if urgent, when he ducked his head to speak into the radio. "Fall back to the jumper."

As the blue-and-grey vessel reached the farthest arc of its wide circle, the undulating beam whining randomly over rocks and debris, three figures departed their various, semi-hidden posts and ran like hell for the mark they'd noted in a seemingly empty field.

Before the dart had doubled back on its distance, all three figures had vanished from sight.

The culling beam dipped from the splayed wings of the dart nonetheless, swelling over the rocky ground inches from the still-open hatch.

Instinctively Marcus jumped back with a barely muffled oath, the beam momentarily seething above him like a curtain before continuing on its rippling way.

"Can that thing penetrate the inside of the jumper?" Billick, his second-in-command, asked grimly, sweat making his short, dark hair stick up every which way. He looked odd standing in the centre of the compartment, almost too big for the low, curved ceiling, with the twin cushioned seats lining the walls beneath bulging, black-meshed equipment nets crowding the overhead space.

"Whaddaya say we don't find out?" Marcus replied almost glibly, brushing past his brown-eyed companion to make for the cockpit, hardly passing a glance over the two sprint-weary soldiers exchanging uneasy glances from their seats on either side of the black-gripped floor.

A moment later the air in the centre of the field shimmered, unnoticed and barely visible, as the cloaked puddlejumper lifted with a soft whine and escaped the seething culling beams skittering over the weedy meadow.

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"Major Lorne, what is your position?" Sheppard demanded through his radio, hazel eyes fixed upon the patchy view of the tree-dotted field, scoured by the rippling beams. The two darts wheeled noisily overhead, raking the ground and the forest's thinning canopy, on its nearest stretch before the stargate.

"_We're in the air, sir,"_ Lorne's voice sounded tinnily through the speakers. _"We didn't know if the culling beam would work through the puddlejumper's cloak."_

"Eh, probably a good idea not to experiment under the circumstances," Rodney muttered unasked, and Peter chuckled breathlessly through the ragged gasps shaking his frame. Teyla heard it, her auburn hair whirling over the stiff collar of her red-and-black jacket as she turned to look at him worriedly. The scientist was slumped over his knees nearby a wrinkled tree; its bark was coming off in curls and flakes beneath the trembling hand pressed to the rough surface to keep his balance. His eyes were closed, his face pale, and as she watched she thought she saw a minuscule tendril reach out from the edge of the black lattice on his neck and bury itself back into the skin of his cheek.

Her silent, indrawn breath through parted lips was interrupted by Sheppard's grim tones, her attention drawn away with a flicker of soft brown eyes. "Right. Their pattern probably won't give us time for you to land and pick us up. We'll have to run for it; dial up on an overhead pass when we get close, then circle around and come after us."

"_Acknowledged, sir."_

Rodney, having seen Teyla's sharp movements, followed her averted gaze to Peter, still bent over his knees and struggling to calm his pounding heart, spinning head and queasy stomach. "Hey, Peter, you slacking off now?"

"Just give me a minute," Peter whispered without looking at him, but the Canadian could see his face was starkly pale, his jaw clenched against nausea and dizziness.

"What?" Rodney demanded, slogging distastefully through the bushes creeping over the debris-strewn ground to reach his side as Sheppard turned, a frown shading his eyes. "I hate to be Captain Obvious, but we've got a time limit here!" he grimaced almost as soon as the words had left his mouth, but a half-hearted grin stretched Peter's lips.

"No, remind me, please," he wheezed. "Are we on a tight schedule?"

"Funny!" Rodney snapped, taking Peter's grimy arm. "You've deteriorated from pointing out the obvious to repeating my words of wisdom. Let's get you out of here before it gets any worse."

"Teyla, get on his other side," Sheppard ordered, fingers rapping in a quick mantra on the butt of his gun. "Ronon and I will take point, cover you from the stargate. Keep to the trees." Teyla nodded and moved to Peter's side, absently brushing away the leaves that dipped towards her. Peter's legs nearly buckled as he straightened, but his arm was already around Rodney's shoulders and the Canadian held him up with a breathless groan about the Englishman's weight. Teyla caught Peter's hand and gratefully he leaned on her, his steps steadying as they turned towards the meadow.

"Get ready," Ronon grunted from the edge of the forest, where foliage spilled onto the field and merged with the stony ground. His green eyes were following the darts as they wheeled towards the closest arc of their circle, his long-barrelled gun resting in the crook of his neck. Then, as they began to curve away, he barked, "Now!"

They broke from the woods on a sprint towards the scattered trees, towards the stargate set as a grey landmark in the washed-out surroundings. They could see the darts as dark streaks on the skyline, too far away for them to identify the Atlanteans among the sparse cover.

Peter stumbled on a rock, a hiss escaping his lips as the movement jerked uncomfortably on his wound. His eyes were locked on the nearby ring, close and yet so far as the chevrons lit with dull clunks, his ears ringing with the shriek of the Wraith vessels – or was that the dizziness that suddenly sent his vision white? His foot caught on something else and he dragged at Rodney's shoulders to keep his balance, hardly aware of Teyla's soft, warm hands steadying him on his other side. His lung burned, his breath came in short gasps, and he was running blind, relying totally on the two team mates flanking him. He was spent; he had nothing left. But that was okay.

Because now he had someone to lean on.

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"What's happening?" Elizabeth's quick step was almost a jog, eating up the short, glass-walled catwalk between her corner office and the wide control room.

"It's from P3M-736," Sergeant Grimault reported quickly, blue eyes flickering over his screen, fingers hovering over the humming crystals. Down below, the security team had their weapons aimed at the fractured shield, crouched at doors and the base of the platform stretching from the stargate to the chiselled stairs leading to the control room.

"We're receiving Sergeant Billick's IDC," Tan Nguyen, an Asian-American technician with sleek black hair, added from off to the side, reading the blipping blue-and-pink window on the slim monitor of his laptop.

"Lower the shield," Elizabeth said automatically, and the sergeant's hand flashed to the crystal beside the DHD's geometric panels to do so. The crystallised shield shattered, vanished, leaving behind the undulating blue event horizon to bathe the crimson floor.

Elizabeth's expression was studiously calm, even though worry was set deep inside her hazel eyes and her stomach was twisting with anxiety. _Did they find him? Was it Ford?_ Were a few of the thoughts buzzing through her mind, half hopeful and half uncertain, afraid.

Three figures staggered through the wormhole with the familiar sucking noise and Elizabeth radioed Carson before skirting the arc of sharp-cornered consoles, slipping between the rows towards the crystal-flanked exit leading into the gateroom. Her gaze swept them cursorily, her stomach tightening when she didn't recognise the filthy man between Teyla and Rodney as two more, Ronon and John, backed into the spacious, sunlit hall, their respective weapons still levelled at whatever danger had been on the other side.

"Lorne's coming through!" John shouted in warning as she reached the stretch of floor between the circular conference room and the control centre, at the height of the steps opposite the stargate. Soldiers all over moved quickly aside but didn't lower their guard as Teyla and Rodney practically carried their lurching, gasping companion to the safety of the short wall flanking one side of the lightly glowing steps, where he sank to the smooth floor, pulling Rodney and Teyla with him.

A second later the streamlined puddlejumper streaked through, halting sharply with a visible ripple of backlashed air. "Raise the shield!" The icy cover plinged into place as the city took over the puddlejumper's controls, the vessel rotating slowly as it ascended through the hexagonal opening in the ceiling.

"What happened!" Elizabeth demanded, pacing swiftly down the stairs at the same time as Carson emerged from one of the bronze, stained-glass doors to the side with a medical team, his white labcoat fluttering around his legs. The diplomat's eyes flashed towards Teyla and Rodney, who had untangled themselves from their companion, but remained anxiously crouched by his side. He himself was slumped on the floor, wracked with fatigue-induced coughs. Teyla was murmuring gently in his ear, her slim hands resting gently on his arm, and Rodney supported his shoulders, his own face grey and lopsided mouth tight.

In the instant that her eyes lit upon them the newcomer caught his breath, his ashen face lifting, and Elizabeth's heart stopped.

Those eyes. Familiar eyes, set in an unfamiliar face, bearded, pale and made gaunt by hardship; eyes that had once held everything from enthusiasm, to shock, to humour… those bright eyes which had once held wit and composure and intelligence, now only thinly veiling desperation, pain, and dulled horror.

"Good Lord," she heard Carson breathe incredulously beside her.

"Peter," Her lips moved but the word was carried on an exhalation hardly strong enough to bear sound. Her own eyes said it all; wide, disbelieving and yet somehow hopeful.

It was a moment, nothing more, because then he sagged against Rodney with a sigh, unconscious. "Stretcher!" Carson snapped behind him, and then he was striding across the hall, past his stunned boss, his team following behind with a soft rattle of wheels and tramp of shoes.

Elizabeth hardly registered as the medics lifted Peter limply onto the stretcher, gaping, shocked, after them as they hurried towards the infirmary with Rodney in tow. When they vanished through the doorway her reverie was broken and she finally became aware of her surroundings, letting out a breath she didn't know if she'd been holding or not, her dazed eyes shifting towards John as he approached, Teyla and Ronon behind him.

"How?" she whispered.

"We found him in the cave," John explained bleakly, his expression distantly sympathetic, softened to wary concern. "Apparently he reconfigured a Wraith beacon, but didn't shut off the Wraith signal. I don't think they recognised us."

She wasn't paying attention. Her glance drifted back towards the door, and John's gaze followed her. "Go on," he ordered gently on a breath, jerking his head towards the corridor. "We can report later."

Elizabeth snapped out of her funk, heard his words, and looked up to the control room just visible over the lip of the balcony, lined in glowing script. Bryan Grimault, himself looking shocked but displaying a calm and attention that would've made Peter proud, nodded to her firmly in answer. _Go._

Hesitating no longer, her heart pounding with wild hope, her stomach twisting with uncertainty, with relived grief, with exaltation, Elizabeth hurried towards the infirmary.


	6. The Difference Between Friends

**A/N:** _First things first: I apologise for taking so long. My laptop broke down the day after I last posted, I couldn't muster the inspiration to write without it, and it took me nearly four months to get another. So there's my excuse; please don't lynch me! Well, and there's the fact that the site went screwy the day I finished writing it (grumbles)_

_Second, if Peter ends up surviving this story, anyone who wants to is quite welcome to join us in the new universe. All I ask is the token acknowledgment if it's referenced._

_Third, an actual disclaimer! EDIT: disclaimer has been moved to first chappie, since I'd edited the story to include Bryan's name throughout the whole fic.  
_

_Second-to-last thing: I've made references to a friendship between Peter and Bates which is otherwise nonexistent in canon, but which I'm currently writing a series on. As of this chappie's edit, some of those are now posted, so check them out.  
_

_Finally, thanks to everyone for reviewing, it really makes it easier to get the creative juices flowing! The feedback'll be especially appreciated this chappie, because I had the 'I suck' syndrome you get when you haven't written for a while, and it'd be nice to know if it's justified. Oh, and angw, I wasn't originally intending to have a scene actually telling everyone about Ford, but for you, I made a change! (grins)_

_This chapter contains slightly religious overtones, but nothing too overt, and is mostly talking... sorry, the action's pretty much all done!  
_

_Enjoy!_

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** V **

**THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES**

Voices.

They rang through the open door of the infirmary's waiting room, just one link in the chain of spacious compartments used as the medical wing. Elizabeth had been hearing them for several corridors now, but the strange acoustics of the city distorted the words unrecognizably until she'd gotten within a few doors.

"You're stayin' out here, lad, my people dinna need you underfoot while they work," Carson was saying with heated frustration as she strode through the entrance, her jaw set and dark hair bouncing. Rodney and the Scotsman were standing toe-to-toe in the centre of the crimson floor, glaring at each other in a way that held no true anger and a great deal of irritation. Around them the oddly-shaped room was empty but for the low, white-cushioned chairs and a few towering pot plants ranging the bronzed and windowless walls. Both the door opposite, leading into the infirmary, and the identical one to her left, leading into the lab, were tightly closed.

"Carson?" Both of the doctors turned at her voice, Rodney looking pale and unhappy, Carson looking harried even despite the hopeful glint in his blue eyes. Elizabeth swallowed through a dry mouth, not wanting to ask her next question but knowing she had to. "Is it – is it really him?"

Carson's eyes softened and he moved swiftly across to her, white labcoat billowing, to place a reassuring hand at her elbow. "We're still waiting on the report from his blood work," he told her softly, earnestly, his brow raised as he spoke. "But so far… I dinna think there's much doubt."

Elizabeth's knees went weak and Carson guided her firmly to the nearest seat, where she sank numbly into the thick white cushion. "How –" She swallowed at the crack in her voice and started again with a deep breath, her fists resting on her knees as she straightened. "How is he?"

"Not too good, t'be perfectly honest," Carson admitted regretfully, blue eyes flickering towards Rodney's demanding expression. "Not injured, exactly, but he hasn' been taking care of himself. Sunburn, heat exhaustion, sleep deprivation, malnutrition…" he trailed off, looking uncertain, and then hedged in a tone that said clearly he'd almost kept from saying anything more, "That's not the worst of it, actually…"

"What?" Rodney snapped instantly, arms folded over his chest.

Carson huffed a sigh, regarding the physicist worriedly. "There's evidence tha' he's been fed on by the Wraith."

Elizabeth closed her eyes and took another deep, shaky breath, swearing to herself that she _would not _cry. She had wanted to, several times, since they'd come to Atlantis, but she knew she needed to be strong for the others. "Is he –"

"Don't get me wrong, lass," Carson interrupted instantly, stuffing his hands anxiously in the deep pockets of his labcoat. "I doubt that it's a danger; actually it had to have happened a while ago, he's just got the scar, but the thought…"

In truth, Elizabeth didn't know whether to breathe a sigh of relief or break down. However Peter had come across the Wraith, he'd been luckier than some of her people during the siege – luckier than Colonel Everett…

"What about that…" Rodney gestured ineffectually at his face, resting his elbow on his other arm as he struggled for the words.

"The spider-web?" Carson asked soberly, and Rodney snapped his fingers at the doctor in concurrence.

"What –" Elizabeth began, already tense with dread, but Carson anticipated her question and cut her off once again.

"It's a marking across his shoulders an' neck," he explained, chewing slightly on his lip as his brow furrowed. "It looks like a spider-web, but we don't know what it is. We're running a series of tests to find out, but I don't know when –"

"Doctor Beckett!" One of the nurses, Patricia Bourne, burst breathlessly through the door from the lab, hardly giving them a chance to open as she squeezed through the narrow space, her dirty-blonde hair bobbing at her shoulders. Her expression was urgent and she gripped a manila folder and some sheets of paper, but Elizabeth couldn't see what they were.

"What is it, lass?" Carson demanded, suddenly focussed and seemingly unaware of Elizabeth as she rose anxiously, hazel eyes flickering between nurse and doctor, or of Rodney who stood beside her, clenching and unclenching his hands, his jaw tense. Carson practically snatched the papers from his subordinate and she seemed only too happy to give them up, but as he studied the page he went white as a sheet.

"Good Lord…"

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The folder slapped down on the bronze-edged, octagonal counter, skewing the sheets paper-clipped to the top. The images on them were dark, showing a number of rounded forms seemingly floating in scarlet liquid, but among them were harsh, miniscule figures.

"They're nanites." Carson said in a bleak tone that brooked no argument. The reactions of the people he addressed were diverse and discouraging: Elizabeth stared down at her clasped hands, face pale, sitting up in her chair; Rodney threw up his hands in consternation, slumping back in his seat; Sheppard cursed, rubbing his face; Teyla drew in a sharp breath; Ronon didn't show anything at all and Lorne frowned, looking unhappy and a little uncertain.

"Nanites. They're those little machines that infected half the Atlantis population a year or so ago, right?" the major asked, his arms folded on the rippled glass of the illuminated tabletop.

"Aye," Carson confirmed. "And Peter's blood is teeming with them."

"Not trying to sound callous or anything, but are you sure he's safe?" Sheppard asked, the first half of his words muffled before he lowered his hands, although one ran halfway through his dark, scruffy hair to rest atop his head.

"Please," Rodney snorted derisively, crossing his arms. "If they were a danger Atlantis would've locked the city down. It hasn't, ergo, they're not a threat to the rest of us." He paused, staring down at the table, and then added darkly, "Not that that means they're not a danger to Peter."

"He's right," Carson agreed, glancing around at the table to make sure he had everyone's attention. Elizabeth reluctantly looked up from her hands, her eyes pained. "And he's right about the danger, too." He stepped back, turning around to pat the controls of the flat display screen at the back of the chamber, against the curved, red-framed rotating doors. "This is an x-ray of Peter's collarbone." The monitor flickered, presenting the hazy black-and-white image, but much of it was shadowed by an intricate net of thin white lines, a meshing of something so dense that an x-ray could easily pick it up.

"What the hell is that?" Sheppard demanded as a chill ran down his spine, sitting up in his seat with narrowed eyes.

"That," Carson said quietly, his worried blue eyes on the picture, "Is a network of linked nanites."

"Carson," Rodney choked, sitting upright in distress, wide eyes riveted to the screen, and the physician finally looked away, towards the Canadian. "Carson, they look like they're – are they in –" He stopped and sank back in his seat, thumb tapping restlessly, apprehensively, in the air, his mind obviously working at full speed and leaping to conclusions that none of the rest could see.

"Aye, lad, they are," Carson answered grimly.

"I do not understand," Teyla said, troubled, her brown eyes darting from Carson to Rodney and back to the display. "I thought nanites were to be found drifting in the blood. How then could so many of these be linked?"

"These ones aren't in his blood, lass," Carson explained, tracing one of the clearest lines with his index finger. "They're in his _flesh._ They're integrating themselves into his cellular structure, like an artificial nervous system." Although a few of his audience missed the implications of this revelation, the gravity of the doctor's tone and Rodney's shakily muttered 'oh, God,' as he leaned forward to put his head in his hands were enough for everyone to grasp the seriousness.

"What does this mean for Peter?" Elizabeth asked stoically, her features schooled to motionlessness but her eyes fearful.

Carson huffed that familiar sigh, the one that meant he was about to reveal something he would give anything to be proven false. "I canna take it out. We're talking a network on the microscopic level here. All of it seems t'be joined to a device about the size of a mobile phone that's buried itself in his back, but even if I removed _that_ it wouldn' remove the nanites. What's more, they're copying themselves."

Rodney rubbed his temples in wide circles, eyes closed, lips moving as he muttered under his breath. Elizabeth sat back in her chair, arms crossed over her red shirt, releasing a long, slow breath. "If this stuff's so microscopic, how come we can see some of it on the outside?" Sheppard asked, frowning, watching as Carson tapped the controls again to set the monitor to the scrolling blue-and-pink screensaver and retook his black-cushioned seat.

"What, did you fail biology in high school, Colonel?" Rodney snapped before Carson could answer. "The device is spreading. The skin is the largest organ in the human body, so it would need to cover as much space as possible; the strands are probably several nanites thick to make up the space."

"Alright genius, _why?_" Sheppard shot back.

Rodney's head snapped up and he opened his mouth to answer, eyes narrowed with irritation, but Carson jumped in first. "I canna be certain _why,_ Colonel, but its effects are pretty clear. He's stabilised much quicker than expected, his sunburn has healed far too quickly, even the sedatives we gave him stopped working in far too short a time."

"In other words it's working like an improved and superior, if artificial, immune system," Rodney summarised with a glower at Sheppard. "Countering unnatural effects. I think we saw it on 736, too, he seemed fine until he had to exert himself…"

"Probably due to the fact that the device hasn't spread far enough," Carson theorized. "Otherwise it would have countered all of his weaknesses. Once his body starts working, the device isn't strong enough to keep up."

"If it's healing him, why would you want to take it out?" Ronon asked in a tone that would have been puzzled if were anyone else.

"Because, lad, the device itself is so invasive that it's doing almost as much harm as it heals," Carson said earnestly, leaning forward over the counter. "We don't even know if that's its purpose; it could be a side-effect of somethin' else."

"All right," Elizabeth said stridently, cutting through Rodney as he opened his mouth to expand on Carson's words. "What can we do to stop it?"

"What if we put him in front of the EMP generator?" Sheppard suggested at once, but Rodney just as quickly shot him down.

"Because even if it turned them off, it wouldn't get them _out,_" the scientist snapped. "And like Carson said, removing them surgically is not an option." Sheppard sat back in his rotating chair, looking unhappy that they couldn't use the easy way out as Rodney continued. "Given that this expedition was _supposed_ to consist of the best and brightest, there should be some able enough people on my team to figure out how to turn off the device and disassemble the nanites. The planet where it happened might have more information if we could get there."

"We'll have to wait, then," Elizabeth said softly as she stared down at her clasped and tense fists. "Since Peter told Carson the _Daedalus _is the only way there."

And she closed her eyes, wondering whether Peter's return would be for good… or whether it would be disastrously shortened.

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Sergeant Bryan Grimault lingered nervously by one of the many doors to the final ward of the infirmary, just out of sight behind the bronze, sharp-edged frame. Inside, the long chamber was filled with the quiet hum of many illuminated crystals, dotted with the thick, sturdy grey pillars and lined with both the high, white-padded examination couches of Ancient bronze and the unmoving hospital beds of Earth steel. Every now and then a nurse passed through, checking the equipment pushed on rolling metal racks against the dusty-brown, maroon-lined walls.

At the distant end, half hidden behind a low-hanging lintel and a crystal-studded column, he could just see the secluded area the medical team had marked as Peter Grodin's.

It was late night – or rather early morning – but since the Englishman's unexpected arrival in the early afternoon the rumour mill had already run rampant throughout Atlantis. The gateroom team had been pestered and harried for details, and more than one member of the original expedition had either been stunned or disbelieving at the news that the physicist had returned from the dead.

Since the beginning of the expedition they'd lost more than one person, but of everyone a grand total of three had been legendised: Marshall Sumner. Brendan Gaul. Peter Grodin. A trio of dedicated men who had very deliberately chosen to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the expedition and its members. For most of Atlantis, the details of each one's demise were a little hazy, but that hadn't mattered.

Now Bryan, only just finished with his self-assigned shift, with the earnest greetings of the gateroom staff in mind to pass on to the man who had once been their team leader, wondered if he'd be able to face him.

Not long ago he couldn't wait to leave the control room, to find out for himself which rumours were true and whether the shabby man he'd seen in the gateroom really was his mentor. But the closer he came to the hospital wing the more his legs seemed too weak to continue, until finally he stood at the threshold.

_What am I supposed to say?_ He asked himself uneasily. _It's been a while._ He could speak about the efforts of the gateroom team, but it seemed somehow unfeeling to prattle on about projects that Doctor Grodin should have been able to conduct himself. _Help me find the right words, Lord,_ he finally prayed inwardly, squaring his shoulders, straightening his green-and-grey jacket, and stepped through the open door.

His approach across the dark-lined floor was slow, exact, giving the Englishman a chance to hear him and be ready. The very fact that the medical team had given the physicist such an isolated part of the infirmary had only fed the gossip, especially when it proved impossible to catch a glimpse of him for those who had trailed casually past.

When Bryan came around the incised pillar Grodin glanced up from the manila folder he was holding, looking tired but alert, and offered him a pleased smile. "Sergeant!" he greeted him softly, letting the folder fall to the white sheet pulled to his waist and reclining gingerly back against his many pillows, folding his arms in his lap.

Bryan took a moment to study the physicist, taking in his weary eyes, his darkly-burned skin, the white scrubs that did nothing to hide his thinness. Although he looked better, cleaner, than he had in the gateroom, he still had an air of disarray or infirmity. Perhaps it was the uncharacteristic beard that still coated his cheeks.

Or perhaps it was the unnerving network of thin black lines that reached from beneath the loose shirt, shoulder to ear, preventing the usually neat Englishman from cleaning up entirely, and Bryan felt with clarity why the area was so far out of the way.

The melancholy smile Doctor Grodin afforded him made Bryan suddenly conscious of the fact that the physicist was well aware of the assessment and its result, and the Canadian forced a grin, pushing down the chilly horror twisting his belly. "It's good to see you, sir." he said sincerely, putting the circumstances out of his mind.

"I was going to say the same." Grodin gestured to the backless, steel-legged stool on the opposite side of his bed but Bryan shook his head in refusal. He'd spent most of the day sitting down; he wanted to stand for a while. "How goes my control room?" Grodin asked instead with a slightly amused twist to his lips that said he remembered the stiffness which had been the gateroom staff's biggest grievance all too well. "You've been taking care of it, I hope?"

"Nothing less, sir," Bryan answered with a truer smile this time, clasping his hands loosely behind his back. One or two of the others might have felt slighted by possessiveness of Grodin's sentence, but of all the team Bryan had worked the most closely with him and felt that it always would be Grodin's control room, even long after the siege. No one could deny the mark the Englishman had made; even now, months after his 'death', Bryan sometimes felt like a usurper in Grodin's seat.

Especially whenever Doctor McKay walked into the room.

"The new staff is pretty capable. We have enough people to arrange proper shifts… no more working overtime in the dead of night. At least, not often." He grinned, partly in mirth for his next words and partly in relief that the exchange was going as easily as he'd hoped. "Actually, for a while there it was known as 'the graveyard shift' even during daylight hours."

"And why is that?" Doctor Grodin asked, amused, eyes glinting with eagerness to hear more, and with a sudden clench in his chest Bryan realized that it might not have been the best turn in conversation.

"Because if you annoy Doctor McKay, you're dead." He tried to lighten his tone, tried to make it a joke, but somehow it came out all wrong, far too solemn, and he grimaced.

"Ah," Grodin murmured, his expression dimming slightly in thought.

_Well, you got yourself into this, you might as well continue,_ Bryan admonished himself. "He missed you a lot, sir," he said quietly. _No one knows that better than me,_ he thought with a sharp pang, remembering the first few weeks, when McKay's harsh remonstrations had made him feel even more inadequate. He hesitated, and then added sincerely, "We all did. The control room staff, I mean. They wanted me to tell you."

"I appreciate that," Grodin accepted his words ungrudgingly, his soft tone light and expression otherwise composed, but Grodin's eyes had always been the window to his soul, and Bryan knew he meant it.

"Doctor Goshawk told the newbies all about you when they first arrived," the sergeant remembered with a slightly distant grin which Grodin returned, recalling the middle-aged, blond-haired perfectionist. "I think they were a bit in awe of anyone who could stand Doctor McKay for more than a few minutes, especially considering how hard he came down on all of us. I don't know if they realized he wasn't as harsh before." He took a deep breath. "I always got the feeling he wanted to make sure we'd live up to both of your standards. I think we did pretty well."

"Tell me," Grodin requested, settling into the comfortable stack of pillows, expression eager. So Bryan did: he told him about the new people, about the projects they were conducting, and many, many anecdotes of the gateroom. The Canadian relaxed, secure in the companionable atmosphere, no longer fearing a slip of the tongue even when the topic changed to that of the siege.

They were so caught up in their conversation that neither noticed the sudden tap of running footsteps, the wild-haired Czech who suddenly appeared, pale, across the way, his blue, long-sleeved shirt rumpled. His eyes were wide behind his glasses and the moment he laid eyes on the scene he stopped short, frozen by the pillar, his lips moving in shocked, incomprehensible expletives.

_Alive! All this time, alive! My God, what has been happening to him!_

"I don't think I've ever prayed so much in my life," Sergeant Grimault was saying soberly, barely filtering through Radek's stunned mind, and for a moment he felt guilty to be eavesdropping but found himself unable to leave or even move. "Although that incident with the nanites came close."

The Canadian was well-known on Atlantis as a functioning Catholic, one of the few who still took his faith seriously. While most of the soldiers had kept that superstitious belief in some higher being, the scientists were too enamoured in their pursuit of facts to be concerned with religious debates, and for some the concept of 'higher being' was now filled only by the word 'ascended'.

"You stayed on Atlantis for the siege," Peter said, not questioning but sounding faintly regretful, and Radek's stomach twisted with familiar 'might-have-beens'. There was no doubt that Peter would have stayed on Atlantis instead of going to the Alpha site, if he'd had the choice.

"It's what you would have done, sir," the sergeant answered softly, unconsciously agreeing with what Radek already knew. "And besides, I have military training. It made sense."

Peter shook his head, smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm glad. I have no doubt I chose the right person to take over for me."

Sergeant Grimault smiled widely in thanks, his usually long face suddenly round-cheeked and glowing. "Thank you, sir, but the truth is that Doctor Zelenka took over most of the projects; I just kept watch over the gate. To be honest… I don't think there was anyone who could completely fill your shoes."

"He is right," Radek spoke at last, his voice trembling and thick with accent. Grimault snapped about, startled, and Peter tilted his head to see around the Canadian, his eyes lighting up with delighted recognition.

"Hello, Radek," Peter welcomed him as the Czech came abreast of Sergeant Grimault, quick blue eyes taking in Peter's gaunt appearance with prickles of horror for the hundredth time since he'd entered.

"I was in middle of experiment," Radek blurted, twisting his sweaty hands together in distress. "Out in city, only returned not long ago. Am finding Rodney in lab talking mile-an-hour, wanting to know where I was, saying you are alive, now we must save you from device." He shook his head despondently as Peter watched him with entertained bemusement, finding it difficult to understand the engineer through his accent.

"I should go get some sleep, I have a shift tomorrow," Sergeant Grimault put in to give the scientist a chance to gather his nerves, and Radek shot him such a grateful look that Peter chuckled. "I'll be praying for you, sir."

"Sleep well, Sergeant," Peter responded with a smile. "And thanks."

Radek's absent gaze followed the sergeant as he departed, vanishing around the maroon door frame. "He did well to take over the control room," he said softly, rubbing inattentively at his wrist beneath the hem of his shirt. "Rodney was not happy with him at all, not with any of them for a long time, but I think…" He cut himself off, shaking his head with a few muttered words in his native tongue and turning back to his friend only to find himself being studied by probing brown eyes.

Nervously Radek pushed his glasses back up his nose, wondering exactly what the physicist was seeing, and offered a tiny smile which Peter returned, gesturing to the round chair. Radek took it gingerly, suddenly unsure what to say or do after his flood of words.

Fortunately Peter took the decision out of his hands. "How is Rodney?" he asked, looking blindly down at the paper-clipped report sitting on his lap. It was true he'd only seen him early that afternoon, but not since then and Sergeant Grimault's words had made him suddenly worried. He knew what Rodney was like…

Radek blinked at him, surprised. "He has not been to see you?" he demanded, and Peter shook his head.

"Doctor Weir and the rest of Colonel Sheppard's team came in with Carson several hours ago, but…" he shrugged helplessly, remembering _that_ less-than-happy meeting.

"_Peter?"_

_Doctor Weir's hesitant voice made Peter look up from his tray of bland hospital food and smile at the string of visitors trailing through the infirmary towards him._

"_Hi, Doc," Sheppard waved as Carson pushed past him to check the clipboard on the side cabinet and Peter nodded back, grateful for the chance to abandon his meal. His fingers had started going numb again, making it difficult to handle the utensils, and he wasn't feeling terribly hungry in any case._

_The doctor frowned but refrained from comment when the physicist set his tray aside, instead asking, "How're you feeling, lad?"_

"_Well enough, all things considered," Peter answered as Elizabeth came to his bedside, where he sat cross-legged and straight-backed amongst the rumpled sheets. Her expression was concerned, if guarded, and Peter found himself unable to meet her examining gaze, knowing he looked like hell and already tired of seeing the repulsion in others' eyes. He remembered Sheppard's expression on P3M-736 all too well, and didn't look at the soldier when he came forward, leaning on the side of the bed._

"_I just thought I'd bring along something for you to read," Elizabeth's tone was light-hearted as she held out the stack of full manila folders and Peter let out a pleased chuckle, smiling as he took them. "So you could catch up." She pursed her lips and put her hands behind her back with a slightly girlish movement, something Peter recognised and appreciated as an attempt at cheerfulness._

"_Thank you," he said sincerely, setting them down on the blanket pushed towards the end of the bed. He'd been going a bit stir-crazy, having given up on going to sleep long ago, too charged with adrenaline and with too many questions to ask. Instead he looked up at Sheppard, eyes flicking at the hulking stranger behind them in query._

"_Oh!" Sheppard tilted back, thumbing towards the dreadlocked warrior that Peter remembered from P3M-736. "This is Ronon. He joined my team a couple months ago. Ronon, this is Doctor Grodin."_

"_Doc." Ronon greeted him in his deep voice without a change in expression, his green eyes unnervingly piercing._

"_Ronon." Peter slanted his head a response, unconsciously assessing the man, who returned his gaze without a flicker. Somewhat grudgingly the scientist admitted that he'd be an asset if you could gain his trust, but his own initial meeting made him wary of the expressionless alien._

"_He was a runner," Sheppard said, rocking back and forth on his feet and looking strangely proud, but Peter's attention was drawn by a single word._

"_Runner?" he repeated, surprised._

"_The word refers to people immune to the Wraith touch," Teyla explained, lifting her chin expressively. "If captured, they are tagged and set loose, hunted for sport."_

Well, that makes a great deal of sense now._ "Yes, I've heard that term before," Peter murmured. "I was mistaken for a runner by some natives while offworld."_

"_Aye, lad, I'm not surprised," Carson muttered without looking around, letting the pages he'd lifted off the board flutter back down. "You've got the handprint and anyone could mistake that device for a tracking beacon."_

_Peter looked down at his lap, clasping his fingers uncertainly, his dark fringe shading his face. "I'm sorry about Lieutenant Ford, Colonel," he said quietly, aware of the suddenly charged atmosphere as his visitors looked less-than-covertly towards the soldier._

"_He's not dead, Grodin," Sheppard said almost accusingly, staring at the physicist and obviously assuming that Peter had taken Ronon's placement on the team as Ford's demise._

_Peter looked up, shaking back his uncut hair, and met his intense gaze. "I know," he said simply. "I met him offworld."_

_He honestly thought that everyone had stopped breathing for a moment or two. Then, "What?" Sheppard asked dumbly._

"_Is he all right?" Carson demanded anxiously in the same instant, taking a few steps closer in his excitement._

"_I don't –" Peter shook his head regretfully, struggling for words. "He was… chaotic. I think he felt betrayed; he definitely felt like none of you trusted him." Elizabeth hung her head at that, hands clasped before her, her heart constricting for the dozenth time that day. "All he wanted was to secure your belief in him again. He really felt the enzyme was a good thing, but…" he shrugged helplessly, but the others understood: the enzyme was most definitely _not_ something they wanted to start using._

"_Why did he not come back with you?" It was Teyla who asked, seeing Sheppard's tight expression, glaring down at the crimson floor._

"_We were being attacked by Wraith," Peter explained, his hands draped over his scrub-clad knees and brushing against the sheets. "He told me to go through to P3M-736, that he'd be right behind me." He shook his head slightly. "He wasn't. The last I saw of him… he was right in the path of a culling beam."_

_There was a stunned, uncertain silence; then Sheppard turned on his heel and strode out without a word._

"But you know Rodney, always blames himself," Radek cut through Peter's thoughts, and the Englishman's lips twisted ironically.

"Right."

Sergeant Grimault's words had only fed an idea that Peter hadn't wanted to admit to himself, had wished wasn't true: Rodney was holding himself responsible for what happened to Peter. Though he'd felt slightly hurt by the fact that Rodney hadn't come to visit, he knew it was because Rodney felt guilty… and Rodney had a habit of running away from his emotions, especially where they pertained to friends he didn't feel he should have.

"He believed you were alive," Radek said, staring awkwardly down at the sheets. "This morning. I told him no, is not possible." He snorted in self-disgust and Peter forced a chuckle.

"Well, have you ever known Rodney to be wrong?" he joked, but then the expression on Radek's face made him stop, a little perturbed.

"Yes," the Czech said softly. "Yes, I have." He shifted uncomfortably, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, and then putting them back on again while Peter waited patiently, recognising that his friend was working himself up to an explanation. "The report would tell you about it," Radek sighed finally. "But is too detached, I think. Too objective. You might not understand." He fell silent, twisting the hem of his shirt sleeves between his fingers. "It was a planet called Doranda," he said at length without looking up. "An Ancient device. A weapon and a power source. You know how the ZPMs work, yes?"

"Of course," Peter answered, brow furrowed. "They draw power from the space and time of universes outside of ours."

Radek interjected before he could go on. "Yes, yes, yes. But Project Arcturus – it was supposed to draw power from _our_ universe, making limitations nonexistent."

Peter understood; such a thing would have been the biggest breakthrough since they'd come to Atlantis. And yet… "Somehow I get the feeling this didn't end well," Peter observed uneasily, and Radek shook his head.

"No. It did not. A member of our team was killed – Doctor Collins. He came on the _Daedalus,_ after the siege, so you did not know him. But Rodney – he would not give up." Radek's pained eyes lifted to meet Peter's his tone growing husky with remembrance. "He said he could fix the problem, believed he could succeed where the Ancients had failed. He asked Colonel Sheppard to trust him, to help convince Doctor Weir to try again – just the two of them." The Czech released a long breath, looking back down at his hands. Peter watched him worriedly, able to clearly imagine Rodney proposing something like that.

"I tried to tell him he was wrong – such power could never be predicted, never be controlled, but he did not listen. He destroyed the weapon, five sixths of the solar system, nearly killed them both." Peter closed his eyes with a groan of dismayed comprehension, sinking back into his pillows and ignoring the twinge in his back when he dropped too low. "Colonel Sheppard has had trouble trusting him since then," Radek finished softly.

It suddenly all made sense. Offworld he'd seen evidence that the team connection, the camaraderie, had vanished to the winds, with no idea how it had suddenly gone. "And everyone else?" Peter asked with a twist of uncertainty.

Radek hesitated, threatening to send Peter's heart plummeting to his stomach. "It has been difficult," the Czech acknowledged at last. "He said some things… but he has apologised. He has lost some standing, it is true, but… not all."

"Just with Colonel Sheppard," Peter surmised, and Radek nodded slowly, reluctantly, remembering how amazed the expedition had been when it became clear how close the pair's friendship had been. As time went on it was just something they took for granted. _It must,_ he realized, _have been a great blow for Peter to come back to that. As far as he knew, nothing had changed._

For several moments they sat in companionable, if dispirited, silence, Radek looking down at his hands and Peter regarding the folders on his lap. Then, "Major Lorne seems like a good man," Peter noted softly, changing the subject, picking up the topmost file and looking at it thoughtfully. It was written by the major himself, an account of the events on a planet named Olesia.

"He is," Radek agreed, grateful for the change. "He is not as critical as Sergeant Bates; knows when to let things go, when to laugh." And, seeing Peter's brow rise, his brown eyes flickering dubiously towards the Czech, he added hastily, "But not as focussed or secure, I think."

Peter chuckled at his earnest expression. "It's all right, Radek." The engineer looked faintly relieved, making Peter laugh again. Sergeant Bates had not been popular, something the marine himself had known, but if Sheppard and McKay had rated first on the list of 'strangest friendships in Atlantis' then Peter and Bates had come a close second. The two had been so correct in their manner and courtesy towards each other that some people even maintained that they _hadn't_ been friends, but Radek was one of those who knew better.

It had been a source of constant amusement that, while the frequent bets on the then-major and the acerbic physicist were focussed on who would be injured, those that were laid upon Elizabeth's two advisors had been about _who _would injure_ who._ Stackhouse had often joked that as long as they were teamed together they were untouchable to everything and everyone _except_ each other.

Then Peter went offworld while Bates remained back at Atlantis, separating them by half a solar system, and the universe decided to have a laugh at their expense. That had jacked up the superstitious nature of more than one person by quite a few points.

Peter had been worried sick when Sergeant Bates hadn't turned up to welcome him back to Atlantis – if the sergeant could ever be called welcoming – and his fears were only slightly assuaged once Carson assured him the marine hadn't been killed, but sent back to Earth. Though he hadn't realized it at the time, Ford's recount had left him sure that those he was closest to had all survived unscathed; it'd been a shock to realize otherwise.

"What is this that Rodney said about a device?" Radek finally asked the question that had been plaguing him since he entered the infirmary, and Peter's hand lifted automatically to his shoulder before he caught himself.

"This," he sighed, gesturing at the web that Radek had been surreptitiously avoiding looking at. "Carson said…" Peter stopped, grimaced, remembering the incident with the nanites and how close Radek had come to having his brain explode, as Ford had so delicately put it. The physicist took a deep breath and continued, his arms prickling like they had when Carson had told him what they found out. "They're nanites."

Radek's reaction was expected: his eyes widened, his face paling, and he unconsciously leaned back, making Peter chuckle somewhat bitterly. "Don't worry, they're not infectious." He filled the engineer in on all the gory details, everything Carson had relayed to him under Elizabeth's concerned gaze, along with her assurances that Rodney had volunteered his team to figure out how to remove them or at the very least shut them off.

The last thing he'd wanted was to go back to that God-forsaken desert planet and somehow the idea of having company made him feel almost ashamed, but the plan was sound and if that was what it took…

By the time he'd finished Radek looked horrified. "Rodney is right," he said immediately. "We will figure this out." He reached forward and grasped Peter's wrist firmly, catching his gaze with blue eyes that were steely with familiar determination. "You are not alone anymore," he insisted, making Peter smile faintly in gratitude. "_You_ have brought yourself back. _We_ will save you."

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**A/N:** _If anyone's interested to know why I made Sgt Canada religious: if you watch 'the Siege part 1', in the scene where Rodney tells them that one of the hiveships is destroyed, you see the sergeant praying in the background. It struck me as a nice little character quirk, so I just had to reference it._

_Only two more chapters to go and counting!_


	7. Responsibility is Damned

**A/N:** _Hey, it only took me three weeks this time! Somehow it seems much shorter. Thanks to all of you for hanging around, even though the last chappie took ages (although, a year, PurpleYin? Ouch)._

_In those three weeks I've posted two other stories, too… one of them plays on the Grodin/Bates friendship I mentioned last chapter and the other is along the same lines, but more of an episode tag than a singular adventure like the first. So, if anyone's interested, they're there._

_There's probably tons of plotholes in this chapter (I was embarrassed at how many I had to fix just by writing it) so if you see any, feel free to punt me into them and tell me to start shovelling; I'll try and fill 'em in. I hope it all makes sense, since I've read over it so many times I'm finding it difficult to work out whether I've said what I wanted to or not._

_There're a few minor charries who get screen-time in this chapter – three of them are names I got off wikipedia and used some deductive reasoning to apply faces to (although only one actually gets mentioned by name, the others just get described), so they're not OCs and thus not mine. The last is a nameless guy who was wandering around the first-season control room to whom I've given an identity. So does that make him mine or not?_

_Anyway. To continue…_

**------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**

** VI **

**RESPONSIBILITY IS DAMNED**

Stephen strode.

He paced through the scarlet-floored halls, past the bustling, olive-drab jumpsuited or BDUed staff as they unloaded the new supplies from the turtle-like _Daedalus._ His impassive face warned no one to interrupt him, even as he threaded his way around carts and plastic-wrapped boxes in the direction of the control room, the light gleaming over his bald head and sharp features.

Idly he noted that somehow the city seemed to be buzzing with excitement surpassing even that which usually hailed the _Daedalus' _arrival, but Colonel Stephen Caldwell did not stop to listen. Doctor Weir had requested them back at Atlantis as soon as possible, and inwardly the officer's mind scrolled uneasily through the possible disasters responsible for their day-early arrival.

Before he'd even reached the cavernous gateroom, Weir intercepted him at a crystal-lit intersection, falling in beside him with a serious expression darkening her hazel eyes. "My office." was all she said, so Stephen bit back the question on his lips and nodded, studying her with experienced brown eyes. She was wearing her uniform instead of casuals, command red with black strips following the sides of her short-sleeved shirt; that often meant that she was feeling the pressure, feeling more like the leader of a semi-military expedition and not an experienced politician. Her closed air revealed nothing significant but in the months since Stephen had first come head-to-head with her over Sheppard's promotion he had come to recognise that the façade itself spoke volumes. Something had happened for which she felt she must bury her own emotions. Oh, she did that often enough anyway, but there was a marked difference between her usual stoic exterior and the one she displayed when something had rocked her to the core, and the one she wore now was the latter.

He kept his peace until they reached her roomy office, two glass sides looking out over the entry catwalk and the spacious gateroom, radiating warmth and personality through the glowing blue panels and Ancient script engraved on the wide cornice, the sculptures, the small tapestries, the artefacts. One could almost think she was an archaeologist, not a diplomat.

Stephen didn't even have to say anything; they'd hardly entered when Weir swung around to him, hands swaying. "Colonel. I'm glad you're here."

Hiding his surprise as her candid manner, Stephen crossed his arms over his khaki jumpsuit. "Well, considering the nature of your situation here in the Pegasus Galaxy, I could hardly hold back." He waited for a beat but Weir said nothing, moving behind her desk and thumbing through the stack of records piled in the centre. So, with a tilt of his head and a bracing, indrawn breath, he asked, "Do you mind telling me what was so important as to push our engines?"

Weir glanced up at him, slipping a folder from the load, her eyes finally showing some emotion; but it was such a mix of things that Stephen could only pick two: wary hope and sorrow. "What do you know about the members of the original expedition that we've lost, Colonel?"

Stephen frowned a little at that, unsure as to her meaning but knowing that, even now, the original pioneers were the closest-knit group on Atlantis. So he said exactly that: "I know how close you all were and how much their deaths affected Atlantis." He knew something about that himself; all veteran soldiers did, whatever branch of the service they were in.

"That's just it, Colonel." She kept her measuring gaze on him as she skirted her white-topped desk, holding out the file. "One of them's not dead."

Casting her an appraising look, Stephen took the file and flipped it open, examining the grainy image on the first page.

_Peter Grodin._ He vaguely recognised that name, having heard it once or twice, especially around the control room. He knew the man had once presided over the gallery, knew he'd been Weir's advisor, and also knew he'd died just before the siege, trying to buy Atlantis time.

And now they were saying he was alive? That explained all the excitement he'd felt – in a war zone, the return of people thought killed was close to a miracle. "How?" he demanded, looking up from the page. "It says here that he was caught in an explosion."

Weir didn't budge. She'd been watching him closely, arms crossed over her stomach, but now she lowered her head to the crimson, marble-like floor, dark, wavy hair shading her face. "Apparently the Wraith transported him off just before they destroyed the satellite."

_She's got to be kidding._ Expression tight-lipped and forbidding, Stephen closed the file with a snap, crossing his arms, tapping the manila folder in the air by his side. "I have no idea how you managed to figure that out, Doctor, but if you're suggesting that the _Daedalus_ run a suicidal rescue mission –"

"No," Weir interrupted instantly, chin jerking up to meet his eyes squarely. "Peter managed to get away from the Wraith. He's here, in the city."

Stephen frowned, shifting. "How did he manage to survive for long enough to even attempt an escape?" he wondered. He would have thought the man would've been fed off of almost straightaway.

"Interrogation." Weir said quietly, remorsefully, her head bobbing, eyes flickering down and then back up to him. "They wanted to know about Atlantis."

To that, Stephen didn't say anything more. There was nothing more to say.

Instead, eyes narrowing, he prompted, "I fail to see what this has to do with the _Daedalus."_

Weir took a deep breath, tossing back her wavy hair. "He's been offworld almost since the siege. On one planet, he came in contact with a device that acts like a parasite, using nanites to spread itself throughout the host body." She must have seen him stiffen with tension, recalling her own reports from the first year, because she added with a slight, somehow impatient smile, "Rodney and Carson assure me they're not a danger. Not to us, at least."

And with a significant look at him, she moved past, out of her office, and he followed, coming alongside her as their footsteps sounded in unison on the maroon-lined floor. "Peter says he knows the location of the world where he found the device," she filled him in as they passed through the control room, winding past the lines of bronze consoles and busy technicians. "What we need is for you to play ferry; transport Colonel Sheppard's team, along with Grodin and Doctor Beckett, to the planet so they can search for more information."

It sure sounded simple enough, but the inclusion of the medical doctor didn't slip past Stephen's notice. There were a thousand variables to consider, variables that could go wrong. How did they know for sure the nanites weren't a threat? What if there were more there and the _Daedalus_ got infected? What if the Wraith were looking for Doctor Grodin?

Then there was his crew to consider. They'd been trapped on a spaceship for almost six weeks straight, hardly given more than a few days on Earth before they'd been sent back. If Grodin had lived with this for days already, it obviously wasn't immediately life threatening. Surely he could wait for a few more while they had some downtime?

He drew to a stop on the broad floor between the command gallery and the circular conference room, turning to face the diplomat and taking a breath to tell her these things, to request a delay. "Doctor Weir –" he began, when the sound of voices caught his attention up the step. Automatically he turned to look through the open, maroon-framed doors that created the chamber's wall and his words caught in his throat, a chill skittering down his arms.

A man he'd never met but recognised as none other than Doctor Grodin himself was in there, seated at the white-lit table, leaning on it with his hands clasped; he was focussed on someone across the way, speaking quite earnestly. But that wasn't what the colonel was seeing. What he saw was the scientist's bearded face looking haggard, his skin blemished with a network of thin black lines, like the sickly threads of infection that radiated from a contaminated wound.

Stephen's argument vanished and he suddenly understood the urgency. Perhaps Grodin had lived with the nanites for days already, but that did not mean he was all right. If it was one of his crew, he wouldn't want to wait. He'd move mountains to cure them.

He was already speaking when he turned back to Weir, shifting slightly on the hard floor. "Alright, Doctor. It shouldn't take more than a few hours to prep the _Daedalus._ We'll leave as soon as you're ready."

"Thank you, Colonel," Weir said softly, staring up at him as he studied her open face, searching for evidence that she'd played him as only an experienced politician could.

All he saw was gratitude.

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Peter's gaze drifted over the interior of the _Daedalus' _bridge, taking in the glowing blue panels lining the sides and the green-gridded display suspended above a thin console in the centre. Just a step down from the chairless central hub was the forward section, in which the commander's seat was flanked by the bulky helm and weapons station, looking out through a viewscreen shaped like a fragmented semi-circle. The bulkheads were ranged with inset dashboards, pinpricked with lights, but the grey floor was open and uncluttered.

It was smaller than he expected, and yet seemed somehow bigger than it was.

And it was nothing like a hiveship.

Not that he was complaining much about the last.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Sheppard said, eyes wandering around the bridge with a pilot's gleam of appreciation as he came abreast of the scientist, hands clasped over the butt of his P90, and Peter smiled slightly.

"Different to what I imagined," he admitted. "I did some work on the _Prometheus_ before I was transferred to the Atlantus project, and I remember seeing the blueprints for the _Daedalus_."

"Looks even better from the outside," Sheppard told him with a smirk, balancing childishly on the edge of the ribbed step where they waited for Caldwell to arrive. Peter had seen the exterior of the ship when they boarded, but he knew what the soldier meant; outside, in movement. Alive.

"I know," Peter answered with a twist of his lips, glancing around once again at the room, over the jumpsuited crew who, he noticed, kept sneaking peeks at him, the way people peeked at someone with some hideous deformity. It made him feel uncomfortable but he didn't want to make an issue of it; it wouldn't help matters at all. Instead he put it out of his head and continued, figuring that his next revelation would soon be public knowledge, so why bother withholding it for a few extra minutes? "I was there when the _Daedalus _ambushed the Wraith ships."

Sheppard's head snapped around to stare at him, hazel eyes shocked. "You _what?_"

"Alright, people," Caldwell interrupted him unwittingly as he strode into the bridge, passing Teyla and Ronon by the door and making Carson jump back guiltily from the long console he'd been examining. Rodney, beside him, on the opposite side of the room to Sheppard and Peter, just snorted at his movement.

The tall colonel stopped just behind his swivelling chair, piercing eyes passing just once around at the attentive bridge crew. "Let's make this trip as short as possible." He turned to look over his shoulder, gaze raking over Sheppard and Peter, side-by-side on the shallow, white-lit step, and to the Brit's surprise his expression showed none of the shock that people displayed when seeing him for the first time, no matter how quickly or skilfully it was covered. "Doctor, if you could give the coordinates to the lieutenant over there," and he nodded to the dark-skinned, round-faced officer at the helm, whose unassuming eyes moved from his scrolling display to Peter enquiringly.

"During the siege, the _Daedalus_ went out to ambush the twelve hiveships on their way towards Atlantis," Peter began, resting his hands on his waist and ignoring Sheppard's tight, questioning stare.

"Doctor," Caldwell interrupted with a frown, turning around completely. "I'm sure it would be to your advantage if we got this over with as soon as possible. So, if you please –"

Peter smiled humourlessly, shaking his head. "You met the Wraith in battle in orbit over a planet. That's the one. I'm sure you still have those coordinates in your databank?" For a moment there was silence as Peter endured the surprised stares of everyone on the bridge, patiently meeting Caldwell's eyes, barring Colonel Sheppard, who swore quietly down at his feet. "I have to admit, you have impeccable timing, Colonel," the physicist added wryly, confirming the unvoiced question they all asked. "Your attack gave me the opening I needed to hijack a dart and get out of there. Well, as far as the planet, at least. Your weapons officer has better aim than I was comfortable with." The thin-faced lieutenant at the station in question grimaced somewhat guiltily.

Stephen Caldwell felt cold, staring back at the scientist's composed face, though his eyes were lit with irony. How close must the man have gotten to the _Daedalus,_ to being destroyed, how desperate must he have been to contact them, only to have them turn around and escape, leaving him behind?

"Lieutenant?" he asked finally, finding his voice, his head turning slightly but gaze not leaving Grodin, and his subordinate answered instantly in his deep voice.

"Yes, sir. We've still got the coordinates in our log."

"Lay in a course." Stephen's tone was unreadable, but his thoughts were on the battle, on the surge of triumph he felt every time their rail-guns ripped through a dart, now overlaid by the image of a frightened, possibly injured scientist, caught in the middle of a fight he didn't know the circumstances for. And he apologised, silently, with his eyes, almost fancying that that scientist understood.

"Yes, sir."

It was only then that Stephen turned around again, breaking his unspoken exchange with Grodin and stepping around his sturdy chair so he could take a seat, sinking back into it with suddenly weak legs, stretched out down the two back-lit steps leading into the forward bay. He'd caught Beckett and McKay's horrified expressions, realized that it was something Grodin had kept to himself to save them the awareness of that irony. The thought of it made the colonel himself break into a cold sweat.

That was a quirk of fate he could easily hate the universe for.

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The planet's orbit was still strewn with debris, drifting aimlessly in star-dotted space. The world itself was grey with thick clouds in the upper atmosphere, hanging in place beneath the flat, turtle-like ship. Peter stared out the sharp-edged viewscreen, focussing deliberately past the reflections, his stomach twisting with remembrance; in truth, he hadn't expected to be hit so hard with fear.

A hand clapped to his shoulder and he jumped, surprised, turning to find Carson beside him, the Scot's brow drawn over worried eyes. "Are you a-right, lad?" he asked softly.

"Yes," Peter answered with a sigh, averting his gaze from the window. "I just didn't expect to have to come back here. I'm not entirely sure why; it's something I should have anticipated."

Carson patted his blue-shirted arm with that reassuring smile he'd perfected for his patients. "We wilna be there long," he promised. "How are you feeling?"

Peter grinned wryly, having expected the doctor to ask sooner or later, and flexed his hands beside his beige slacks, half-hidden between them. "Still a bit numb," he admitted. "But no worse. And my back doesn't hurt unless I move the wrong way." That was a slight lie; now he didn't have something to immediately capture his attention, he found himself more aware of the incessant throb set just between his shoulder blades, the occasional sharp, stabbing pains.

Carson nodded, looking unhappy, and Peter knew he'd caught the deception, but he also knew there was nothing the Scot could do. That first night, he'd tried to give Peter a minor painkiller and sedative to help him sleep and had found it negated within ten minutes. The rest of the drugs they'd given him had gone the same way. It had frustrated the doctor to no end.

"Doctor," Caldwell interrupted them, tilting his head to speak over his shoulder. "Is there anything in particular we should be looking for near the location?"

"I lived in some ruins, in the middle of a desert plateau," Peter answered instantly, grateful for Carson's encouraging hand on his arm, but finding himself unable to meet anyone's eyes. "Within travel distance of the stargate."

"Woah, woah," Rodney's voice sounded, and with a few quick footsteps the Canadian was right in front of him, peering at him with a questioning frown. It was practically the first time the physicist had spoken to him since they came on board. "If the stargate was so close, why the hell didn't you leave earlier?"

Apparently the physicist had caught Peter's use of the word 'living' and all implications therein. The Brit had admittedly skipped over a few details when he'd been briefing them – there were just some things he couldn't bring himself to mention except by necessity. It was too soon; he'd been alone for too long. He didn't know if he could bear his friends' pity.

Peter tilted his head a little in a slight shrug, meeting the scientist's uncertain eyes. "It wasn't within walking distance, Rodney. The heat distortions made it difficult to see far, so I didn't even know it was there, and I didn't have anything to carry food or water to attempt a survey." He took a deep breath to answer the question Rodney was already opening his mouth to ask. "I only made it there later because I was picked up by traders with a wagon."

He couldn't muster the desire to say 'slavers' in the middle of a bridge full of strangers, and somehow he thought that Rodney caught the discrepancies in the excuse, but the physicist seemed to understand by Peter's closed expression that he didn't want to talk about it.

Instead the Canadian's hand twirled in the air as though to elicit a response or encourage his own thoughts, his planned words changing in an instant. "When you say 'desert', do you mean –"

"I mean sand, heat, and no water except the odd oasis, Rodney, yes," Peter cut in with a slight frown, and Rodney's hand stilled and dropped, the thickset scientist grimacing. Rodney already knew that, of course, unless he hadn't been listening during the meeting – which was a possibility – but Peter got the feeling he was complaining just for the sake of it. "I was lucky. If the ruins hadn't been within walking distance of where I crashed I wouldn't have lasted long at all." _I just barely did anyway,_ he added mentally, remembering that hellish, disorientated journey.

"I think I've found it, sir," the sharp-eyed lieutenant cut in before Rodney could say anything else, although by his expression there wasn't much he had prepared, and Carson's gentle squeeze told Peter more than the doctor could have said either. "On the sun-side, north of the equator. Sending the coordinates to Hermiod."

Caldwell looked up to the trio of doctors, eyes flickering to the rest of the team behind them. "We'll beam you directly into the ruins," he told them. "Radio us when you're ready to come back up."

Minutes later the six of them rematerialized on the flagstones by the muddy oasis, lit by the sun pouring through the cracked, colour-bleached dome. The heat struck them like a blow, chokingly dry, and Rodney instantly groaned that he'd forgotten to bring any sunscreen when his words suddenly cut off. Peter wasn't listening anyway, too busy scanning the sand-scoured rocks with a sinking feeling in his belly.

He really, really hated deserts.

"Where now?" Sheppard asked, pulling him out of his reverie, and Peter studied the numerous entrances with a rising feeling of nervousness when he didn't recognise any of them.

Then, "That way," With a sense of relief he nodded towards a sand-duned doorway which had a tiny monolith of stone set by the entrance and then looked back at the others. Ronon and Teyla were both examining the broad walls, relaxed but alert, and Carson was looking around unhappily, mumbling under his breath.

Rodney was staring wordlessly down at the flagstones by his feet, and, following his gaze, Peter saw his unfinished clay map, now dry and weather-beaten. Or, more specifically, the long row of scratches lining the edge which marked the planet's passing of days.

Swallowing, taking a deep, careful breath, Peter turned away.

By the time they reached the little debris-strewn room in which Peter had found the entrance to the junk room, they were all uncomfortably hot and sweaty. The Englishman had tried to refuse the flak jacket, stating that the most dangerous things in the ruins were small enough to bite them in the foot and so it would offer little protection, but Sheppard had insisted – just in case. They did, at least, have the foresight of leaving behind their jackets, but apparently both Carson and Rodney had grown used to wearing the military black shirts and the latter grumbled about it incessantly, shutting up only when Sheppard snapped at him.

Of them all, Ronon was probably the most comfortable in his light-coloured clothes, taking great pleasure in crushing the insects skittering around the flagstones beneath his heel.

"I thought deserts were supposed to be lifeless," Rodney had complained at one point, slapping at a mosquito-like bug that had just buzzed an escape from his hand.

"Far from it," Peter responded with a short laugh. "Just keep away from anything brightly coloured and you'll be fine."

Carson instantly jumped away from a fluorescent purple lizard he'd bent down to study, sunning itself on a terracotta rock. "Did you learn that the hard way, lad?" he asked nervously.

"No," Peter shook his head, stepping around a tall dune, kicking up sand. "If I had, I probably wouldn't have survived to make it back to Atlantis." Behind him, Rodney blanched, exchanging an anxious look with Carson, and Peter shared an amused smile with Teyla, walking not far to his left.

It was true that the Englishman had mostly been lucky enough to avoid the coloured animals, but he had seen the effects on the few birds or lizards who tried to feed off them. That was proof enough for him, even without the times he'd almost stepped on one of the bloody things.

Ronon gave him a hand moving the thick stone door, and then they all took refuge in the relative cool of the passage, Peter leading them down the narrow stairs. As soon as he set foot on the red-toned band of stone running the edge, the room lit up just as it had the first time, revealing that the long room was completely unchanged. Rodney squeaked slightly as he entered, ducking his head beneath the weight of the low ceiling, eyes rolling fearfully up to regard it; but he didn't say a word about his claustrophobia and the challenging look he sent Carson when the Scot moved anxiously towards him spoke volumes.

"We're looking for a computer of some kind," he said aloud instead, his LSD already in his hands to scan for power signatures as the rest of his team moved among the tables, himself hovering interestedly but cautiously over the nearest desk. None of them wanted a repeat performance of Peter's many little problems.

Peter, already mostly into the room, paused in front of a cleared piece of the far table with a pang, staring down at his initial attempts to create a distress beacon. His fingers touched on the jumble of wires, moving to the slim, dust-coated Athosian lighter he'd left behind, and then the stub of pencil he'd used to mark the devices for reference – the same pencil he'd pulled when they drew straws on the satellite.

Casting a glance towards Rodney, still at the dim glow of the entrance with Carson beside him, Peter reclaimed the two objects and slipped them into his trouser pocket, and then lifted his head to find Ronon had been watching him. The Satedan said nothing, his green eyes unfathomable, and soon looked away.

"Hey," Sheppard called from the far wall, standing before a thin, gauzy shroud draped over the far wall, lit from behind by the dim little crystals. He caught the sheet around the barrel of his P90 and pulled, dragging the light cloth down to the floor in a sprinkling of dust. Behind it was a broad panel, reminiscent of the ones on Atlantis, dark and deactivated. "This it?"

Seconds later Peter was there, Rodney not far behind. The Canadian didn't even stop; frowning, he reached out an inquisitive hand, brushing the ribbed metal set into the base of the screen. The panel immediately lit up with a blink, making the three nearby flinch at the brightness, the white glow playing over the sandy stones and dusty equipment on the desk behind them.

"Good, good, good," Rodney muttered to himself, unslinging his bulky backpack and dropping it to the floor. "Looks like the language is similar to Ancient, so our translation programs might be able to make something of it." Within moments his slim laptop was out and hooked up to the panel using the spare leads the physicist had learned to carry around, fitting them into some sockets after prying off the ribbed cover to look into the mechanics of the computer. He nattered on about the likenesses between this and the Ancient technology as he went, blue eyes afire with excitement, and for once Sheppard didn't tell him to be quiet; he was kind of interested too.

Though he'd die before telling anyone that, especially now.

Peter was studying the panel itself, his bearded face awash with the luminosity of the monitor. While he didn't understand the language beyond a few words – Rodney was right, it was remarkably like Ancient – he had long since mastered the art of deciphering the icons; he'd done it all the time back on Atlantis. It was amazing how universal some symbols were, actually; others had to be learned by trial and error.

So, by the time Rodney had just initiated a download of the system, the touch-screen flashed and shifted under Peter's careful fingers, blipping up a revolving, intricately lined blueprint of some anonymous device, unrecognisable blue text scrolling rapidly down the side.

"Stop playing around, will you?" Rodney snapped without looking up from where he sat cross-legged on the grimy flagstones, his computer resting securely in his lap and his skin washed-out in colour by the glow of the display. "Much faster my way."

Peter smiled at the familiar tone, slightly relieved at Rodney's willingness to speak to him, and didn't disagree; but neither did he stop, flipping through the line of icons at the bottom like a scrolling queue of files, and when Rodney didn't reprimand him again he knew he wasn't really doing anything to hinder the chief scientist.

"So what is this place?" Ronon asked impassively in his deep voice, coming up behind them with Carson by his side and Teyla trailing behind, still casting glances around the low chamber.

"It's a junk room." Rodney answered almost absently, then jabbed a finger at the screen, gesturing at something none of them could see. "It says here that all these devices were failed experiments. They were stored away in case they somehow helped other research or in the off-chance they figured out the problem." He snorted. "They didn't have a chance. Have you _seen_ what half of these are supposed to do? It's ridiculous."

"Yes, Rodney," Peter said dryly, still flickering quickly from schematic to schematic, taking in the shapes but not bothering to memorise any of them. "Seen, but not understood. You're the one with the translations."

"Yes, I am," the Canadian answered smartly, tapping at the arrow keys methodically with his forefinger. "Looks like a close derivation of original Ancient. Hasn't evolved at all in ten thousand years, so the culture was probably destroyed by the Wraith during the first war." The laptop beeped and Rodney grinned, lifting a hand in casual triumph. "Ha. Easy."

"Didjeh find somethin'?" Carson asked eagerly, moving behind the black-clad scientist as the team pressed in a little closer, eager for information so they could escape the close, stuffy air of the room.

Rodney's blue eyes raced across the screen, his excitement fading, his hand drooping and lopsided mouth drawing to a tight line. When he glanced unhappily up at Peter, standing in front of him, his expression was crestfallen, his face pale.

"Rodney?" Peter asked softly, his heart sinking, letting his raised hand drop as he turned fully from the panel to meet the Canadian's disheartened gaze.

Rodney's jaw clenched and his eyes skittered elsewhere, over his impatient team-mates, the still, dusty shapes to the side, back to the blue monitor. "It's a medical device," he said, his voice shaking over the words, although it was clear they in themselves were not completely the source of his discomfort.

"Are you kidding, lad?" Carson demanded, shifting his weight to his other foot, hands moving to his waist. "Usually medical instruments don't have the side-effect of endangering their patients."

"Yes, well, like I said," Rodney snapped back instantly over his shoulder, managing to regain a vestige of his usual sharp composure. "This is a junk room. If it's in here, it didn't work."

"That is not very comforting," Teyla observed on an exhaled breath, looking around her with renewed nervousness. She wasn't the only one; Ronon gripped his square-barrelled pistol, aiming it stiffly at the ground and facing outward towards the cluttered tables as though expecting something to leap out at them at any moment.

"You were right about what it does, Carson," Rodney continued without seeming to hear the Athosian, rereading over the data. "The device's purpose is as a healing device. It, ah," he snapped his fingers, struggling for words. "It acts like an immune system, speeds natural healing ability… it was intended to effectively cure old age and render conventional doctors obsolete."

Carson frowned at that, his clothes rustling as he knelt beside the scientist so he could read over his vested shoulder.

"I thought you said that if it was in here, it didn't work," Sheppard pointed out. "Sounds like it works fine."

"If you want to look at it technically, yes," Rodney snapped back with a slight roll of the eyes, turning a glare onto the dark-haired officer. "But that's the problem. It's programmed to spread and that's what it does. Like Carson said before, it's highly invasive. No matter how small the nanites are, they're still a solid foreign body, and in this case, there are billions of them. In the blood you don't notice it, but in among the cells it's a completely different matter."

"Get to the point, McKay," Sheppard growled.

"My point, _Colonel,_" Rodney retorted. "Is that some parts of the body are too dense to let the nanites in without causing irreparable damage."

Carson, pale, wide-eyed, lifted his eyes from the screen. "The test subjects were all driven insane," he whispered numbly, his gaze travelling unseeingly over the people in front of him as he sank back to sit on the floor. "The nanites spread too far. Once they got to the brain and spinal cord…"

"It was never going to work," Rodney said simply, his voice cracking again, Carson's emotions appealing to his own. "Not with the levels of density the nanites need in order to serve their purpose."

There was silence as they took in the implications, and one by one, the team's bleak, shocked gazes turned automatically to Peter. The Englishman refused to meet any of their eyes, sinking numbly back against the rough wall with his head downcast. There just wasn't anything to say.

Not for any of _them,_ at least; but Rodney, as always, found words. And this time, they proved helpful. "We still have some time. The nanites spread where it's easiest first, so the CNS will be the last thing affected."

That broke the spell; it felt as though all of them had taken a deep, steadying breath and were ready to go on. "Alright, if you two scientists think we've got enough," Sheppard said briskly, his boots scraping on the ground as he shifted and moved back towards the stairs, Teyla looking after him and Ronon still eyeing the jumbled equipment critically. "We'd better get back to Atlantis."

"Well, at least now we're not researching blind," Rodney said with somewhat false jauntiness, his head jerking almost comically as he glanced from Sheppard, to Carson, to Peter. "Now we've got the data, this should be a snap." Peter raised his head and cocked an eyebrow in semi-joking scepticism, but Rodney just tilted a finger at himself. "Genius at work, remember? I can fix anything."

The familiar line made Peter smile faintly, and though Rodney soon dropped his gaze to work at detaching his computer while Carson made his way anxiously to Peter's side, once again asking after his health, the Englishman felt the breath-stealing, fearful twist in his stomach ease.

Whatever had happened between Rodney and Sheppard, whatever had happened on Doranda, however Rodney now felt about himself, Peter knew that if there was a way, Rodney would find it.

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"Radek!" A firm hand shook his shoulder, accompanied by the annoyed bark of his name, and Radek blinked groggily down at the flat keys of his computer, wondering what had just happened and why he felt so disconnected. That soon faded at the fingers snapping in front of his nose, and he instinctively pulled away, pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose.

Then everything came back in a rush: Peter, the sombre procession as they returned from the planet, Rodney's manic drive to find a solution.

Speaking of whom…

"…don't think we'll be able to interface with it and – Radek, are you even listening to me or has senility finally caught up with you?" Rodney demanded, crossing his arms over his chest, foot tapping feverishly on the smooth floor.

"I am sorry," Radek sighed, taking off his wire-rim glasses to rub his eyes tiredly, far too drained to argue. "It is late and I am finding it difficult to concentrate." He didn't even _want_ to look at the clock; he didn't need to. Rodney had begun working his team even before the _Daedalus_ arrived, so between that and his constant trips to the infirmary to visit Peter, Radek hadn't had as much sleep as he should have. He knew for a fact that Rodney hadn't set foot in the medical wing since Peter had returned and felt obliged to make up for the Canadian's evasion.

If it had just been one of Rodney's frenzied projects, he would have been able to beg off with no trouble – one of the few that could – but his desire to find an answer was as strong as Rodney's and between the two of them neither had a chance for much rest.

He needed to take a break, he knew that, knew both of them did. Rodney disagreed.

"Peter doesn't have _time_ for you to lose focus, Radek!" the Canadian snapped, blue eyes narrowed in misplaced anger.

"Peter would not want us to drop from lack of sleep!" Radek retorted in frustration, even though he knew that if it weren't for Carson's interference the Brit would probably be right there with them. The Scotsman had only reluctantly allowed Peter to join in with the project, but still came in every evening to drag him away 'for a good night's rest', casting a steely eye over the rest of the team that indicated he was quite willing to do the same for them if they pushed it too far.

Which was why the pair was alone in the device-scattered lab, the display suspended at the head of the room shimmering green and blue over the long tables dividing the centre and the equipment casting shadows across the many surfaces.

"Fine," Rodney growled, his head jerking to the side in a reflexive action. "Go and sleep, waste good hours we could put to better use."

_Stubborn. Always, stubborn._ Radek sighed, replacing his glasses and slipping off his tall, circular stool. His movements followed by Rodney's tight-lipped gaze, he closed the lid of his laptop with a click, grasping it loosely to his side before raising his head to meet Rodney's accusing glower, laying a placating hand on Rodney's arm. "We cannot help him if we are not rested," he reminded his friend gently, and the Canadian's distressed eyes followed him out until his footsteps had stopped echoing down the corridor.

Ten minutes later Rodney's own head was in his arms, crossed on the steel table, his black-screensavered laptop pushed before him. His mind was racing far too quickly for him to sleep, he knew that, it was why he didn't even try; instead he kept going over and over what they'd learned, what ideas they'd already contemplated and then discarded.

_EM pulse wouldn't work, nanites are resistant to degradation, unlike the others we've come across, so there's no way to break them down afterwards. No way to interface with the device, acts as a central control system but designed to be self-contained._

They probably wouldn't be able to connect with it even if there was a suitable port to do so; the damn thing was deep enough to require surgery to get to. And even if they could, just looking at the schematics, Rodney knew it would be too big a risk to try it anyway.

The implant was designed to protect itself against almost anything that could be thrown at it. It had to avoid the body's natural immune system, the wear and tear of exertion, the possible effects of the illnesses it counteracted. It was certain that such an act would be counted as a threat – the detailed logs that came with the data said that all too clearly.

At first he'd been hopeful that the device would shut itself off, that its power source – whatever it was – would run out, but seeing the data they'd collected he lost any hope of that, even though he grudgingly acknowledge the genius of the idea. It was supposed to be long-term, so its creators had chosen a power source that would almost never run dry.

It fed off the electrical currents of the body's nervous system. That was what caused the numbness, was partly the reason it was made in the way it was. Even normal nanites could only be programmed to do so much; taking care of an entire body was stretching the limits. With the speed and efficiency the creators desired, it was impossible to do and still enable the machines to replicate. The format of networking and the chosen power source erased that problem.

Solitary nanites, such as the ones which held the virus they'd encountered, could conceivably act as a secondary immune system, could heal and cure with the best of them, but this was something else. The system meant that they could build on each other, meant they could protect each other, protect the body they inhabited, and made it virtually impossible to stop them.

In the end, that was what made the experiment a failure.

_This isn't working._ He squeezed his sleep-itchy eyes shut to try and erase the ache behind them, then blinked rapidly down at the desk surface. _Radek's right. I need a break._

And yet what good was that when he couldn't sleep through it? Maybe he should get some sleeping pills from Carson…

But that meant he had to go to the infirmary. And the infirmary was where Peter was.

The thought of meeting him there made Rodney's stomach twist. The mission to the desert planet had been bad enough, possible only because Rodney had buried himself in complaints, in their objective, rather than dwell on the circumstances overly much.

In a way it was his worst nightmare: to have someone he'd killed come back, where he was forced to face them, knowing he'd been responsible for their death. He'd discovered recently just how hard it was to apologise for a very real mistake. He didn't have the courage to do it again.

Somehow it made it worse when he knew that Peter would never and had never blamed him, even though he deserved everything the Brit might throw at him. The anger, the disappointment, the lack of trust he could deal with, had been dealing with, hard though it was; the acceptance that was Peter's trademark…

God, no. He didn't deserve that. That was why he'd never tried to resist the consequences of Doranda – his friends' reactions were justified and he knew it, had grown enough to admit it.

_Coward._ Rodney's inner voice sneered, a part of him he'd once thought to be long quenched. He didn't disagree. He knew what he was.

_But you don't have to be,_ another part reminded him, one that still sounded like one John Sheppard, though Rodney couldn't say how pleased the colonel would be to know that. _Is the man who walked into an energy beast a coward? Is the man who stepped in front of a gun a coward? Who came after me and a superwraith? Who stayed in a flooding control room? Who went with the bastard who'd tortured him? Is that man a coward?_

Rodney's jaw set and he lifted his head in determination. No, that man wasn't a coward. Somewhere, somehow, he'd changed. Okay, so he'd acted like an idiot with the Arcturus project. But he was still him.

So it was that, a few minutes later, Carson exited his office, ceramic coffee cup in hand, to find Rodney lingering hesitantly by the infirmary doors, eyes fixed upon the hidden alcove which belonged to Peter. "Lad?" he asked, causing the Canadian to jump, startled. Carson frowned; Rodney's eyes were rimmed in black from exhaustion, and the Scotsman couldn't help but wonder how long it'd been since he'd slept properly, making a mental note to give him some sleeping pills before he left.

"Carson." Rodney said in that tone of his that should be a question but wasn't. His eyes didn't stay long on the scruffy-haired doctor, whose white shirt was rumbled and face lined with fatigue, testimony to the fact that he was staying up nights looking over the data himself. Instead they travelled back to the far end, straining as though wanting to see around the pillar in the way.

"He's asleep right now, but if you want to sit with him awhile," Carson suggested gently, and Rodney jerked back as though electrocuted.

"No, no," he babbled instantly. "Lots of work to do, just taking a walk to clear my mind."

_Liar._ Carson thought instantly with fond exasperation, studying the way the physicist refused to look at him, the way his hands motioned. He knew that Rodney had been avoiding the infirmary, knew why. "Any progress?" he asked instead, soberly, following the Canadian's gaze towards the end.

"Well, we found out that –" Rodney cut off at Carson's sternly weary Look, pursing his lips unhappily. "No." he muttered.

Carson huffed, fingering the smooth handle of his mug with absent anxiousness. "If we're goin' to find something, it has t'be soon," he said gravely without looking at his companion, brow furrowed in worry. "It's getting worse, taking over his immune system. Soon he might not be able to live without it at all. Even if we managed t'get rid of it… he could be killed by something as simple as a bloody virus."

For several long moments there was silence beside him, and Carson frowned. He would have thought that news would elicit some kind of comment, at least.

But when he turned to look at Rodney it was to find the physicist's hand suspended in the air, his expression frozen, staring unseeingly at the room before him, and the Scot's heart skipped a beat. He knew that look.

It was the look the Canadian got when he'd just had a brainwave.

"Rodney?" he asked, his tone almost urgent with excitement, and as though his voice was a signal Rodney's hand tapped the air.

"That's it," he exhaled. "Carson!" He turned to the expectant, somewhat startled physician and snapped his fingers at him, breathless with enthusiasm, his blue eyes sparkling. "You're a genius!"

"What?" Carson demanded, clutching his forgotten mug so tightly in both hands that it was a surprise it didn't crack.

"The device is completely self-contained," Eyes unfocussed and turned inwardly in rapid contemplation, Rodney's hands started to dance, like they always did, what Carson had long thought of as the motion of a true artist. "We'd have a hard time trying to get into it to do anything useful. But a virus – a _virus_ could do that for us."

And as though he'd forgotten Carson was there, muttering to himself with rapid sentences, Rodney turned around and strode from the room, leaving a slightly bemused but very hopeful physician behind.

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"Rodney."

Rodney looked up from the keyboard, his furious typing halting for a moment so he could grin at the new arrival. "Peter!" he greeted him cheerfully as the Brit approached, skirting the long tables where the rest of Rodney's blue-shirted team worked, hunched over computers and schematics, conversing in low voices. He didn't even feel a twinge of squeamishness upon seeing his friend, even though the nanites now reached to his hairline on one side of his face, creeping up his neck on the other. The pang of guilt was sharper but he shoved that aside, once again focussing on his task instead of his friend.

"I'm sorry I'm late. Carson was holding out on me," Peter apologised, coming to Rodney's unoccupied side and casting a quick acknowledging nod towards Radek, seated on the other side of the table where he was muttering to himself under his breath in Czech. "I hear you've had an idea?"

"Virus," Rodney said promptly, shifting aside on his stool so Peter could see the lines of script on his screen. "I can't believe it took me so long. If we can introduce a computer virus into the device's system, we can trick it into withdrawing. We won't have to do a thing."

"Except write the virus," Peter pointed out with a wry smile, and Rodney rolled his eyes.

"Aside from that, Captain Obvious." He gestured enthusiastically at the monitor, his knee jiggling restlessly under the table. "The data from the planet has been invaluable; we've nearly got all the relevant pathways identified and the program is almost done. Soon you'll be able to walk around without looking like a Borg extra from a Star Trek set."

Peter's lips quirked in amusement, his eyes flickering over the blue text, and opposite him Radek snorted, apparently not too busy to keep from listening in.

But then Peter's grin turned to a frown and Rodney's heart clenched. "What?" he demanded anxiously, and Radek paused in his typing to glance across to the two of them in query.

"This is all very well, Rodney," Peter said slowly. "But how are you going to deliver it?"

Rodney opened his mouth to answer –

And then found that he didn't have one.

There was a heavy pause in which Rodney stared, momentarily stumped, at Peter, whose frown deepened, mouth tightening, still gazing at the scrip on the monitor. "What about –" he began, and Rodney felt a flutter of panic, suddenly knowing exactly what the Englishman was going to suggest.

"No," he cut him off. "No, not that, there's something else –"

"Reprogramming," came the accented answer from over the table, and the pair turned to look at Radek, looking intently at his own screen before glancing up to meet first Rodney's pleading expression, then Peter's questioning eyes. "We reprogram one of the nanites."

"That's it," Rodney repeated his favourite words, snapping his fingers gratefully at Radek and turning in his seat to look at Peter, eyes skittering this way and that in thought. "Some of the nanites are deployed into the bloodstream to cover all their bases, we can take one of those, change it, put it back, done."

Peter smiled in guarded relief. "Sounds easy." His gaze was caught by flickering display hanging at the front of the room, the Ancient-made screen showing an enlarged schematic of a nanite for the entire room to use as reference, and he frowned slightly.

"Well, obviously we'll need to test it," Rodney acknowledged, his mind already several steps ahead, not really noticing when Peter moved around him to study the design, hands on his hips. Neither did Radek; he had turned around to the laptop on the low trolley set beside him against the table, his fingers blurring over the keys as he confirmed the validity of his idea. "But if we changed the program a little – this could work. This could really work."

"These are complicated," Radek told him. "Finding the right algorithm will be difficult."

"Right, right, right, I'm sure I saw some notes which could help with that –"

Peter glanced back over his shoulder to where the two scientists were now firing ideas at each other in a well-played match of skills and couldn't help but smile again, feeling comforted by their dedication, by the unproven and yet obvious fact that they'd been staying up nights for his sake.

Then he turned back to the monitor, the green light playing over his tanned skin as his eyes flickered with fading hope over the images once again.

No, he wasn't wrong.

It wasn't going to work.

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"We ready?" Rodney demanded, rushing into Carson's smallish lab like a whirlwind, but Carson didn't even look up from where he was standing at the desk on the back wall, focussing the microscope as he leaned backwards to compare its position to the pink, circular image on the corresponding laptop's screen.

"Almost," the physician replied, giving it one last tweak before standing back and lifting his head to meet Rodney's manic gaze. The Canadian still looked far too tired for Carson's liking, but the Scotsman knew better than to say something, not when they were so close to an answer. Rodney would just ignore him or ask for stimulants or something equally daft.

He just hoped they really were near the end.

"We're ready," Radek was assuring the Canadian from where he stood beside the square, white-topped desk against the grey pillar in the centre, holding up the slide on which was the blood sample. Peter, previously sitting on the round stool just behind Radek, beside the unframed Ancient screen, wordlessly moved closer, crossing his arms and looking over Radek's shoulder as the Czech used a pipet to drop their modified nanites into the sample and slipped it beneath the glass.

Tense with anticipation, the four of them looked to the brightly coloured screen, where they could see the magnified images of the tiny, harsh machines against the grainy red. Peter almost held his breath, hoping that he'd been wrong after all, but as they watched several of the nanites drew near to another, surrounding it, crowding it, and when they broke away a few seconds later it was gone.

Carson exhaled perceptibly and Radek looked down to the table, pursed lips drawing back in frustration.

"Okay," Rodney said disappointedly, thumb tapping reflexively. "So that didn't work. We'll try again. Like Radek said, these are complicated, it might take some experimentation to get it right."

Six hours later, the next one didn't work either. Nor did the next. Rodney was all set to try again, Radek stoically behind him, when Carson thrust a bottle of sleeping pills into his hand and threatened to sedate him if he didn't try to get some sleep. One glance at Peter's tired expression had seemed to decide him, if only to spare the Brit the disappointment of a possible failure for a few hours.

The next morning they were back at it again, Rodney barking orders to his team, now looking somewhat rested, himself working feverishly as he bounced ideas off of Radek. Peter tried to help, offering his own suggestions, always finding reason to hope at every test before having them dashed. In the beginning he attempted to be more productive, but while writing the program his numb fingers kept slipping on the keyboard to the point of risking an hour's work for one blunder, and to his frustration he'd been forced to let the others do the typing.

Over the course of the next two days they changed the program a dozen times, long enough that Carson finally gave in and helped set up a corner of the main lab for the testing, just to avoid running all over Atlantis. Every now and then Elizabeth, or Sheppard, or even Caldwell popped by to see how they were doing or cajole Rodney into letting his team take a rest. Once, Bryan came in with some notes on nanite research that he'd found in the Ancient database, but it proved to be little more than an abstract, not much help at all.

"If Kavanaugh were here, he would be complaining about wasted resources," Doctor Jaworski said once with a chuckle, running a hand through his grey hair as he stretched his aching back, sore from so many hours leaning over a laptop, and cast a gaze twinkling with humour towards Peter.

The Brit had grinned back, remembering the first time he'd heard that Kavanaugh had left. Radek had originally been the one to tell him, but Albin Jaworski later expanded the reasons into a story that was no doubt mostly fiction. A member of the original expedition and one of the control staff, he was everyone's favourite to partner with during the nightshift because he regaled his companion with stories in that wonderful Polish accent of his. Whenever they'd been paired together, he and Peter had always tried to outdo each other in terms of wild tales.

Albin almost always won.

But the humour vanished within seconds when similarly grey-haired Donaldson had muttered jadedly in answer, "Maybe he'd have a point," and rubbed his lined face tiredly.

Rodney's head jerked up from his fixated stare at his laptop to glare at the thin scientist. "I did _not_ just hear you say that," he snapped angrily, and pessimistic Donaldson blinked back at him in a manner that said he wasn't doomsaying, Kavanaugh-style, so much as worn-out and despairing enough to risk his superior's wrath to point out a negative.

Finally, "Okay, let's try this again," Rodney rubbed his eyes wearily, thumbing one last key and nodded assent to Radek, who once again transferred their modified nanites to the slide.

Carson, having been standing in on the research for a day now, partly to make sure that everyone got some rest at some point or another, accepted the slide and swivelled around in his chair to put it in place, ignoring the pair crowding over his shoulder, the rest of the team staying back but straining to see. Peter stood silently with his arms crossed near the edge of the table, in the corner, close enough to observe.

Inside the circle of the microscope's boundary, the nanites drifted against the mottled background. One floated into view…

Only to be mobbed by several more.

Leaning on the desk, Carson hung his head in despair, while Radek rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily and the other scientists exchanged resigned glances, moving back towards the end-to-end desks splitting the middle of the lab to start again.

"This should work," Rodney muttered, his tone one of disbelief, his eyes tracking the shifting nanites. "Why isn't this working!" His hand rolled, a sure sign he was about to dive headfirst into another idea and drag the rest of them with him. "Maybe – maybe if we –"

"No," Peter cut in, staring grimly at the still-moving screen, and his friends looked at him in surprise. "No, Rodney. It wasn't going to work. You know it wasn't going to work. The nanites communicate via a mild EM field initiated by the electrical current they use to power themselves. Every time you try to modify their programming, you modify the field. Our nanites register as a foreign body to them."

_He's wrong, this idea will work, it will… oh, God, it won't…_ "No, no, no, no, no, no, no," Rodney said desperately, holding up a finger to stop him from going further, and Peter's eyes shifted towards him bleakly. _No, he can't say it, that can't be the only way, it's too risky, I won't let it be!_ "No, don't say it, there's something else we can do –" He stopped, his face lined with anguish, knowing that he was lying.

"Don't make me say the obvious, Rodney," Peter said softly without looking away, both of them apparently completely ignorant of their audience. Radek looked between them miserably, the only one who seemed to have any idea what they were talking about – for now. There were several dawning faces on the other side of the room.

_Oh, God, not again._ One moment, Rodney was staring at his friend; the next, he'd deflated, sinking down onto the spare stool beside Carson, his expression raw and guilt-stricken as he broke their exchange. _He's going to do something stupid and risky. Alone. Again. And I can't stop it._ "I killed you," he said hoarsely, feeling too drained, too exhausted to bother hiding from it any longer.

"I'm here and I'm alive, Rodney, if not all right," Peter answered quietly, his arms so tense he was almost hugging himself.

_My fault._ "But I should've checked the pathways, should've checked my work, if I had this wouldn't have happened and you wouldn't have been culled," Rodney rambled, one hand fisting in the air, his gaze flickering around the floor, unable to look up at the Brit. _Killed. Culled. Not much difference._

"You had no time," Peter said firmly, albeit thickly. "It doesn't matter whose fault it was or what might have happened. I won't say what I went through was a lot of fun. It wasn't. The point is, I'm all right with that. But." He paused, waiting until Rodney had looked up, and held the distraught Canadian's gaze with a haunted, pleading one of his own. "But I can't go through with this unless I know you are too."

His beseeching expression cut into Rodney like a blade. The Canadian found he didn't know exactly how they'd moved from the nanites to the satellite, but suddenly realized what Peter already knew: his reluctance for their single option was rooted in that final mission.

Because Rodney would always blame himself for not finding another option, for sentencing Peter to that nightmare, no matter what happened.

He didn't want risk that a second time.

Yet, once again, they only had one option. It was Peter's life, Peter's decision, really, but Rodney would take on the responsibility for the outcome. He hadn't taken it well last time, when Peter had made the choice for him.

This time, strong as the Brit was, he wasn't strong enough to do that again. Rodney knew that he could say no, and Peter would trust him to find another solution.

But staring, pale-faced, at his friend, his colleague, his own little slice of hell, Rodney knew there was only one choice he could make.

He only hoped it was the right one.

Because one way or another… this would end it.


	8. Fighting For Fighting's Sake

**A/N: **_Three months; I feel so guilty. The final scenes were being annoying - they were two of the first scenes to come to mind before I began the story and now I got to write them, they decided to be difficult. Still, at long last, this fic is finally done. S'matter of fact, it's the first chaptered story I've ever finished, period, full stop, exclaimation mark. I dunno whether to party or not. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all your feedback, and I'm hoping I'll get some from you closet readers out there - in honour of the final chappie? (puppy dog eyes)_

_Anyway! I've gone back and re-uploaded the rest of the story for the final time, and I should apologise for the scene breaks - the site's built-in ones weren't working. I should also probably warn you about a scene in Carson's operating room, but it's not so bad, so it prolly isn't necessary, but anyway...  
_

_So enjoy, and I hope the end is satisfactory. _

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** VII **

**FIGHTING FOR FIGHTING'S SAKE  
**

"Ex_cuse_ me?"

"Look, I know it sounds crazy," Rodney snapped, thumb jiggling madly, straight up over the crystalline table where his hands sat, restlessly curled, in front of him. "But the fact is, it's Peter's only chance." His last words wavered slightly but he didn't take his intense gaze off Elizabeth, even when the brunette diplomat leaned forward over the desk to rub her face with a sigh.

"You want to use electroshock on him?" Sheppard clarified, staring at the Canadian physicist with something akin to appalled disbelief.

"The charge would be relatively mild," Radek interjected earnestly, leaning with his elbows on the illuminated hexagonal table, hands rubbing almost absently before him. "It will not harm Peter at all. The problem is that it will need to be continuous in order to deliver the virus."

"And the longer the charge, the longer the device can feed off its energy, yes, we've got that," Rodney snapped with a sharp hand movement, but Radek just turned his hands supplicatingly towards him and he deflated, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

Sheppard slouched back with a frown, somewhat assuaged, and instead turned to another matter that had been bugging him. "There's just one thing wrong about all this," Idly the pilot tapped the smooth, glowing tabletop, one hand resting on his waist, slumped and swinging gently in his chair, his hazel eyes narrowed at the desk.

"Just one?" Caldwell asked sardonically in a moment of outright cynicism and tension, but Sheppard ignored him; there were plenty of things wrong and they all knew it, although the lieutenant colonel didn't bother to correct his turn of phrase.

"I thought these things were supposed to heal people. If it's killing them, wouldn't that be a conflict in its programming?"

"Yes, well, we thought of that," Rodney mumbled behind the hand still massaging the bridge of his nose before it pulled away to roll before him in a smooth motion in tandem with his words. "Unfortunately it's not something we can exploit until it's too late. The nanites are programmed, first and foremost, to spread; until that's complete, everything else is a secondary function. But even then, as long as the brain still works, they won't care what state of mind the person is in. They're machines, Colonel. All they understand is the mechanical function of the body."

"But that is something that will work to our advantage," Radek tapped the air absently with a bent forefinger, his shoulders hunched as he leaned on the table. Sheppard looked incredulous and Caldwell looked sceptical, but Elizabeth lowered her hands and cocked her head, showing that she was listening.

"We might be able to administer a sedative," Carson took over, looking unhappy at the prospect of condoning such an action, but if nothing else Peter and Rodney's exchange in the laboratory had convinced him there was no other option. "If we time it right, the nanites will focus on the electrical charge instead of the drug. Hopefully, Peter won't feel a thing."

The physician's worried blue eyes flickered towards the scientist in question, sitting with his elbows on the table like Radek, his hands pressed together, resting his forehead on his thumbs. He looked beyond exhausted, more from the device and the strain than lack of sleep, and though he didn't appear to be listening Carson knew he heard every word.

"This is all you could come up with," Calwell said, something between a question and a statement, sounding slightly disbelieving.

Rodney huffed, rolling his eyes. "The theory is sound, Colonel," he snapped belligerently, showing none of the reluctance he'd displayed less than an hour ago in the main lab.

"If we do this and it doesn' work, we wilna get a second chance," Carson warned them seriously. "The device will have spread too far to risk it another time."

Elizabeth looked up from her clasped hands, her thumbs restlessly fidgeting, her only sign of discomfort. "Peter," she said softly, her soft hazel eyes fixing on the scientist across the way, and Peter lifted his head to meet her gaze bleakly. "This is your life. Your call."

For a moment he was silent, staring down at the table, and for one uncertain, gut-twisting instant Rodney though he'd change his mind and back out; then the Brit took a deep breath and answered, his tone stumbling a little over the words, something between a resigned chuckle and fear. "Under the circumstances, I hardly have anything to lose." He met Rodney's eyes squarely, and in his expression Rodney saw apprehension – but he also saw trust.

The Canadian's mouth tightened, his skittishness stilling for a steadying, promising moment in which Rodney knew they were committed, for now the decision was made he knew that none of them would have the strength to turn back.

That was the air that hung over the multi-sided desk, within the closed, circular room; one of grimness and determination.

"How long until you can get set up?" Elizabeth asked softly.

Rodney finally glanced away from his friend, towards the dark-haired diplomat. "It'll take a while to modify a computer to let out a sufficient electrical charge in conjunction with the virus, but we should be ready within a few hours."

Elizabeth nodded resignedly and the atmosphere shattered in a burst of flurried, anxious activity, leaving the diplomat behind, blessedly alone, where she bowed her head over her still-clasped hands, shoulders hunched, and, not for the first time, prayed.

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The infirmary was abuzz with activity, most of it concentrated at the secluded end at which an Ancient scanner was located, the maroon door leading into one of the mainstream corridors locked and secure against inadvertent intruders. Carson intended to monitor the device's withdrawal as soon as the virus was delivered, so they were going to execute the procedure right on the thickly-padded gurney beneath the broad, panelled head of the machine.

Rodney and Radek were off to the side, swiftly and skilfully setting up their tools, while attendants bustled in and out beneath Carson's direction, shifting equipment to make room for the trolley with the modified computer and preparing a nearby operating room for the device's final removal.

Out of the way, with shelves of brightly-coloured boxes at their backs, stood the rest of the flagship team, Elizabeth, and Caldwell, the tension around them apparent. Sheppard's hand was resting as though for reassurance – for him or for everyone else was debatable – on the holstered pistol at his side and Elizabeth's arms were pressed to her stomach, almost hugging herself in apprehension. Caldwell looked grim, Teyla outwardly composed but with anxiousness reflecting in her brown eyes, and Ronon may as well have been elsewhere except for the fact that he could see the tension in his team-mates and clearly felt he should be there for their sake, if not Peter's.

Actually, Carson wasn't entirely sure why Caldwell was there either – it could've been a desire to be in the loop, a sense of responsibility, or a genuine feeling of sympathy – but he didn't have time to challenge him and if Peter wasn't going to object then he didn't see the need either.

Speaking of whom…

Carson slowed as he approached the gurney, his skin tingling with nervousness, his worried blue eyes fixed on the dark-haired scientist. He was sitting with his legs over the side of the bed and his head bowed, white-knuckled hands gripping the edge, once again dressed in scrubs and already attached to a heart monitor. The Scot almost felt that his friend was trying to hide the web of nanites beneath the fringe of his hair, and swallowed. _This'll be over soon._

"Peter," Carson said quietly, touching his arm, and Peter tilted his head receptively without looking up. "Are yeh sure you want to do this?"

For a moment Peter was silent; then he answered in a low voice, "I've already died once, Carson. If it's going to happen again… I'd rather go out with a fighting chance."

For a moment Carson didn't know what to say; then he whispered, "Aye," and patted him encouragingly on the shoulder.

Rodney cleared his throat, making every eye in the room turn towards him. "We're all done," he said, striving for a strong voice and failing with the slight shake on his last word.

"Alrigh'," Carson exhaled tensely. "Everyone who's not meant t'be in here, out."

Within moments the room had emptied, leaving space for Elizabeth and the others to approach as Rodney and Radek wheeled the steel trolley to the gurney and Carson directed Peter to lie down. Patty Bourne flitted by his side, helping him attach the cords that Radek held out to them as Peter closed his eyes, taking deep, steady breaths, struggling to relax.

He felt the prick of the IV, Carson's reassuring grip on his shoulder as the Scot murmured, "We're injecting the anaesthetic now, lad."

Then there was relative silence apart from the beep of the heart monitor, the near-imperceptible hum of crystals, and for a moment panic bloomed in his chest, the sense reminding him of the utter seclusion of the satellite; he could almost believe he was back there. His eyes flickered open, head turning, the fear assuaged by the confirmation of his friends' presence and encroaching sleepiness. For a moment his gaze locked on Rodney's tight face, staring back at him; then he was swept away by spiralling darkness.

Long moments passed as Carson monitored the Englishman anxiously, each second a weight to bear, unsure as they were exactly when the drug would wear off. "He's under," Carson said softly without looking away from his patient, gently untangling the IV's line from Peter's wrist. Rodney took one last glance at the Brit, huffed something between a sigh and a bracing inhalation, and turned towards the laptop, pressing a single key.

The pink-and-black screen flickered, a single window with a charging bar appearing on the black background. "Uploading," Rodney murmured, his blue eyes on the screen, unable to look over at Peter as the bearded physicist was beset by a flurry of twitches, not exceptionally severe considering the low yield of the electrical current but still making the Canadian fight a surge of guilt.

"It's working," Carson reported with guarded hope in his voice. "He's still unconscious –" The physician's accented voice cut off as he stared, appalled, at the thin lines that traced themselves across the unmarred portions of Peter's face. Behind him he heard several indrawn breaths but didn't look around; instead his lips set grimly. "Rodney, how's it going?"

"Not done yet," the physicist snapped without looking up. Carson's brow furrowed worriedly, watching the network spread across the back of the Brit's hand, curling around his palm, his fingers.

"_Rodney._" Carson demanded urgently as the heart monitor began to pick up speed and Peter's body tensed, his jaw clenching automatically.

"Done! Shutting down." There was a whine as Rodney shut off the computer, Radek unplugging the buffer sitting on the tray beneath the desk which had regulated the electrical charge.

"What now?" Sheppard asked grimly as Carson flipped open the laptop connected to the grey-toned scanner, barely paying attention.

"Now we wait, lad." was Carson's unhelpful answer, already focussed on activating the machine. "Just push that aside, Rodney, on your way out."

Rodney's jaw tightened, but that was an argument they'd had the instant they'd left the briefing room hours before and Carson had won: everyone was going to move into the waiting room.

As the others filed past her Elizabeth watched Carson's competent fingers priming the machine, the blonde nurse keeping an eye on Peter's vitals, and withheld the urge to bite her lip. He was going to be okay. He had to be.

With a final glance at the scene, she turned on her heel and strode out just as the scanner hummed to life behind her.

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The waiting room was unbearably quiet, the air heavy with tension and worry. Of them, only Ronon and Radek managed to find the will to sit down, the former sprawled, legs out, on one of the white-cushioned chairs and the other sitting with his shoulders hunched and hands twisting anxiously in his lap. The rest of them remained standing, Sheppard leaning against the dusky brown wall, Caldwell practically at attention, Elizabeth alternatively watching the scarlet floor or Rodney as he paced, while Teyla just looked around at them all, catching people's eyes and smiling reassuringly. In truth the Athosian hadn't known Peter as well as the others, particularly the scientists, but she had called him friend, and her presence there was both for him and for the rest of her surrogate family.

Abruptly Rodney came to a sharp halt, hands behind his back, staring at the plain wall. "Radek," he said without turning around, frowning, and the Czech looked up forlornly, the light winking off his glasses. "What kind of instructions did we write into the virus for when the device has detached itself from Peter?"

For a moment Radek didn't reply, lips working silently as he ran over the code in his mind; then his blue eyes widened in horror and he jumped to his feet, his blue shirt rumbled. "We didn't write any," he blurted agitatedly, and Rodney spun around, pale but unsurprised, clearly having come to the same conclusion and looking for assurance. "We were so worried about getting the main part of the program right – and we couldn't wait for much longer without too much risk to Peter – we just completely forgot!"

"Rodney?" Elizabeth asked worriedly, seeing his expression.

Rodney's jaw tightened. "The device has a one track mind. When it's infected a body, it's meant to spread. But when it's outside of a body –"

"Its aim is to attach itself to someone," Sheppard finished for him, ending with a curse as he levered himself off the wall and made for the infirmary, shoes thudding on the floor. "Stay here!" he ordered the others, vanishing through the door, and it was only Elizabeth's firm hand on his arm that kept Rodney from following, even as he ground his teeth in frustration and self-irritation, exchanging an unhappy look with Radek beside him.

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The laptop beeped. For a moment Carson stared at the revolving, three-dimensional image of Peter's body, sure he'd seen wrong; then the line flashed over the figure a second time, flashing red with a chime that sounded sweet to Carson's ears. With a relieved, disbelieving huff, a triumphant grin broke out over his scruffy face as the scarlet lines sketched across the contours of the picture began to recede.

"It's working!"

"Vitals still look okay," Patty Bourne's voice, light with gladness, answered him, her face stretched with a wide smile that echoed the one shining in the Scot's eyes. Behind him, the medical team waited with a gurney in place, ready to transport the scientist into the operating room.

Carson's gaze flickered to Peter, still unconscious on the padded hospital bed, watching in fascination as the black lines ebbed from his sun-browned hands. Another peal from his laptop caught his attention, and this time a tiny frown creased his brow, his muscles tensing with warning. "It's withdrawing much faster than we thought it would." His shoulders prickled alarmingly and quick hands moved to switch the scanner off, disconnecting the laptop, slamming it shut. "We need to get him into surgery. I want t'be ready to get rid of that thing as soon as it's out and it's not leaving us much time."

The secluded area around the scanner exploded into activity, responding to the edge of urgency in the CMO's voice, and within moments the scientist had been transferred onto the stretcher, wheeled quickly and efficiently towards the open entrance to the OR.

Behind them, the doors to the waiting room had slid open unnoticed, and Sheppard watched with dark eyes and an uneasy hand on his still-holstered gun, trailing after the team with sure steps.

He entered into controlled chaos, a silent observer. Clearly the speed at which the device was receding had taken Carson by surprise, as he hadn't even had time to scrub or do much more than pull some gloves on, barking out orders with the high efficiency of an experienced physician.

"I've got a tray here!"

"Good, keep it ready now, lass, and be prepared to put something over it –"

"Doctor Beckett, he's ready…"

"Alrigh', people, we're gonna havta work fast here. Avoid touching the thing if ya can, we dinna need it to jump in someone else. Scalpel."

John remained silent among the equipment arrayed on the gleaming desks along the wall, slowly shifting closer, weaving his way through the empty gurneys, his eyes on the bloodied wad of cloth that hid Carson's deft hands.

"Doctor, I see movement!"

"Aye, I see it –"

"Forceps."

"I got it…"

John's fingers twitched, drawing his sleek firearm, cradling the rough grip in the palm of his hand. His body was tense but his eyes were expressionless, gaze on the vaguely shapeless, red-stained form that was lifted carefully with long, dripping surgical tongs. It wriggled, moved, the blood making it slick, catching on the edge of the steel and launching itself right at Carson's face, even as the Scot jerked away with an explosive oath.

In the same instant there was a sharp gunshot, echoing in the windowless chamber, and the device ruptured, sent flailing across the room and hitting the wall with a thunk that had delicate bits and pieces scattering over the scarlet floor.

Pale, Carson looked up to find Sheppard still with his gun trained on the weakly twitching machine until it fell still, and only then did the doctor let out a slightly shaken breath. "Thanks, lad. We can take it from here."

"We'll be waiting, Doc," was Sheppard's only reply as the weapon was returned to his side and he exited the room with a little more reassurance than he'd entered.

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"What the hell's going on in there?" Rodney exploded the instant the maroon doors slid open, before Sheppard had even stepped over the threshold, and the rangy pilot frowned slightly in annoyance.

"Is everyone all right?" Elizabeth cut in anxiously before the Canadian could pick up speed, coming to the thickset scientist's side.

"Yeah, yeah, I shot it before it got anyone else," John answered almost casually, confidently, and Elizabeth couldn't restrain a relieved sigh.

Damn, but she didn't sign up for this.

"What about Peter?"

The diplomat's mouth tightened slightly, struggling to ignore the slight, desperate tone in Rodney's otherwise demanding voice, keeping her hopeful eyes on John's thin face.

"They're working on it," was the soldier's quiet reply.

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It seemed an eternity before the maroon doors finally hissed open again – though in reality it wasn't long considering the dire nature of the previous injuries that had graced the medical wing – and every gaze in the room was fixed on the entrance before they'd even finished rolling into the wall.

It didn't faze Carson at all as he stepped through, too used to the pleading, grim looks.

"Carson?" Elizabeth asked anxiously, her arms folded across her middle, as was her wont.

"The incision was fairly easy to sew up and a second test has revealed that his blood is free of the nanites," Carson began, his hands stuffed in his pockets, before a tired smile creased his face. "Right now we've got him in the infirmary – we'll have to keep an eye on him for a while t'give his body a chance t'get used to his own immune system again, but barring any nasty bugs, he'll be completely fine."

The effect was almost electric; the tension in the room tangibly shattered as Radek's face glowed with a tight, joyful smile, Rodney deflated to one of the chairs with an 'oh, thank God' and Elizabeth let out a long, tension-relieving breath. Teyla exchanged a grin – almost a laugh – with Sheppard, who leaned back against the wall as though compensating for suddenly rubbery legs. Ronon and Caldwell, standing near the back, didn't say anything, but they were both soldiers and knew what it meant to have a team member return when they were thought to be dead.

It was almost the same feeling as when the Wraith had turned around and left Atlantis after the siege; the alleviation of pressure, of apprehension, the light feeling that nothing could go wrong now that they'd beat the odds.

Of course it wasn't _quite_ over yet, they knew that, but it was a beginning.

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Peter's eyes blinked open, his vision burning white for a few moments before it cleared to reveal the triangular panels of the ceiling. For a few fuzzy moments he stared up at the plain surface, his thoughts scattered, trying to figure out what had woken him up.

Abruptly it all came back to him; where he was and, more importantly, _why._

Stomach tight with uncertainty, he lifted a hand to his eyes, staring at his sun-browned skin and callused fingers, completely nanite-free. He couldn't feel that frustrating numbness, wasn't afflicted by those annoying stabs of pain, and the only discomfort was the slight ache of a wound just above his shoulder blades.

It had worked.

He assumed. But since he couldn't feel the device and wasn't currently gibbering at the walls, it was a fair assumption to make.

Relief washed over him, less than he thought it would, but that could be because he was still feeling comfortable from sleep, feeling safe because of the familiar bronzed colours and dim shades of the lighting.

A distant clatter on the floor made him blink again in mild surprise, the sound carrying clearly in the infirmary, quiet aside from the hum of crystals and equipment. Curious, he pushed away the last of sleep-fuzziness and levered himself onto his elbows with a slight hiss at the tug at the stitches on his back, squinting into the shadows of the curtains nearby.

"Rodney?"

The broad, blue-clad back he could see just behind the drapes froze for an instant; then Rodney's head poked out, his expression one of false surprise. "Peter! Hi!"

Peter raised an eyebrow. At least now he knew what had woken him up. "What are you doing back there?"

"Um, nothing." was Rodney's answer, his head ducking away and shoulder moving, accompanied by another rattle that said he'd just thrown something onto a table. Then he emerged completely, trying to hide chagrin, shoving the material aside and brushing his hands absently on his black trousers in such a familiar way that Peter couldn't help but smile.

It was the sound of Rodney's footsteps on hard scarlet floor that made him realize what he'd noticed but not registered: aside from the two of them, his corner of the infirmary was empty.

"Where's Carson?" he asked with a slight tilt of his head at the vacant alcove. He could hardly even tell he was in the infirmary proper, it was so blocked off by pillars and half-walls, muffled by curtains.

Rodney's eyes widened, his reaction immediate and completely typical. "What's wrong? Are you in pain? Did he miss something? Should I get him? Maybe –"

_Oh, dear. _Laughing, Peter raised a hand to still his friend's slightly panicked flow of words, instead gesturing to the round-topped stool beside the bed. "I was just surprised he's not here, that's all."

Understatement. He'd expected the physician to be hovering around his bedside the minute he woke up.

"Oh. He's…" Rodney cleared his throat embarrassedly, poked his thumb back towards the curtains and the main infirmary behind them. "Elizabeth made him go get some sleep."

_Ah._ Peter couldn't help grinning at the thought; for all that Carson reprimanded his friends for not getting enough sleep, he tended to ignore the rule himself.

But… _made?_ Sounded as though he'd slept more than he thought. "How long have I been here?"

"What do I look like, a pocket watch?" Rodney retorted, but his tone was faded, as though he was either too tired for snark or simply didn't have the heart for it, and he added immediately afterward, "You've been out all night. It's morning."

_Quite a while, then. _

Rodney shifted uneasily in the after-quiet, opting not to sit down, trying to maintain the unspoken façade of 'just passing through'.

Peter eyed him discreetly, wondering whether Carson knew he was there and what he'd say if he didn't. The Canadian's face was still lined with tiredness, his blue eyes heavy with exhaustion, worry…

Was that guilt?

…damn. It was.

Peter almost saw the decision in the line of Rodney's mouth drawing thinner, in the setting of his jaw, at the same instant that the brown-haired Canadian blurted, "Look, I'm sorry, it's my fault, I should've done something about it when it happened…"

_For God's sake, Rodney. For all your confidence you really can't accept forgiveness, can you? _Peter sighed, refraining from voicing his thoughts, shaking his head but unable to help the tiny smile that touched his lips. "Not this again, Rodney. I don't blame you." he said instead, willing his friend to understand and let it go. As far as he was concerned, it was all over. He wasn't offworld. He wasn't on the satellite. He wasn't plagued by nanites. Assigning blame was a moot point, even if he'd been inclined to do so in the first place.

The physicist drew himself up, chin lifted not proudly but firmly, his chaotic air stilling for a moment that surprised the Brit. "Maybe you should. I've…" He swallowed, his shoulders slumping. "I've made mistakes before, done things I shouldn't have, you know…"

Peter frowned slightly, knowing and not liking where this was going. "If you mean Arcturus…"

Rodney visibly flinched at the name. "You – you know?"

Peter refrained from huffing in exasperation. "I read the report, Rodney. I don't see what bearing this has on what happened at the satellite."

That wasn't entirely the truth – it had nothing to do with the satellite, but everything to do with Rodney's sense of responsibility.

"I made a mistake!" The Canadian sounded almost incredulous, as though the answer should have been an obvious one, as though it was something forbidden. Maybe it was; they'd always relied on Rodney an awful lot. For him to be wrong, even once, and on such a grand scale… it was probably selfish of him, but Peter found he didn't really want the details, didn't really want to talk about it. He felt it was none of his business, and in some ways he was still struggling to catch up with the changes that had occurred in the time he'd been gone.

That was one change he didn't really _want_ to catch up with.

"We all do, Rodney. I wasn't there and I didn't witness it, so it has nothing to do with me. That's between you and Colonel Sheppard. But I…" he paused, not sure what he was going to say or even meant to say, but Rodney was staring at his shoes, waiting – and Peter had a rather irritated suspicion that what he wanted was a tongue-lashing – so the Brit took a deep breath and finished. "But I'm damn glad you're still around."

For a moment there was silence; then, so quietly Peter wasn't even sure he'd heard it, his voice resigned, finally accepting, Rodney whispered, "Thanks."

There was another period of stillness, more comfortable than before, and Peter hoped it meant that Rodney had accepted the past and his part in it, put it behind him. The Brit didn't, after all, want to make him feel guilty every time he looked at him.

It took a moment before he noticed that Rodney still looked nervous and kept looking up as though about to speak before looking down again. Peter waited patiently, head cocked slightly to the side, but the question never came; instead the Canadian squared his shoulders and motioned towards the door with one hand. His gaze still skittered around his friend instead of meeting his brown eyes, and Peter's lips quirked with an amused, if puzzled, smile. "I guess I'd better – get Carson –"

He started to turn away, missing Peter's smile turn into a slight frown; but he couldn't miss the slow, cautious tone as he spoke. "Rodney…" Rodney stopped, head down, hands in his pockets, but didn't turn around. "What were you going to say?"

For a moment Rodney didn't answer, making Peter's perplexity deepen as the broad-shouldered scientist took a faltering step away.

Then, abruptly, Rodney jerked back to face him, hands swinging from his pockets, his expression flickering with uncertainty, confusion, resolve, before he took a deep breath and asked in a quick exhalation, "Why?"

Peter blinked in surprise, not expecting the sudden question even though he'd offered the opportunity for it to be voiced. His mind felt sluggish with that familiar sensation of being several steps behind Rodney' thought process. "What?"

"Why were you sorry?" Rodney's voice cracked on the last word but he didn't look away, lips sealing shut as though already regretting the query.

Peter didn't notice; he just stared at his friend wordlessly, at a loss as to what to say but mind unexpectedly, uncomfortably full of possible answers. Some of them were things he'd thought of, but others were ones that only just came to light.

_Because I kept on teasing you on the ride there. Because I turned on the artificial gravity. Because I didn't look at the airlock pathways properly. Because I only destroyed one hiveship. Because I had to leave you when the greatest battle was still to come._

_Because I knew you couldn't save me._

He thought he already had an explanation, but none of them seemed to reach his lips. All of them were right, and yet none of them were. Not by themselves.

Maybe Rodney wasn't the only one with issues to resolve.

Then, out of the babble of reasons vying for attention, a single word came to the forefront, and he knew it was right. It was vague, but it summed everything up: all his regret, his fear, his uncertainty.

"Because." he said simply, and he could see in the slight tightening of Rodney's lips that it wasn't as much as he wanted to hear, but the understanding nod that came next said that it was enough.

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The sound of Elizabeth's footsteps faded into the close air of the narrow passageway as she paused in front of the maroon infirmary door, staring at the incised maroon metal and taking a moment to collect herself.

This whole ordeal had been wearing on all of them, yet even though it was all but over she still felt the need to project confidence, for her own protection if not the benefit of others. The situation had struck too close to home, just like it had so many times before, and like all those instances she held on to her 'leader face' as a shield until she could hold herself together.

When she felt ready she took a deep, even breath, lifted her chin and entered.

It was peaceful, that was the first thing she registered, and an almost instinctive wave of relief loosened some of the tension. The infirmary was peaceful all too little, it seemed, so each and every instance when calmness reigned was gold.

As a matter of fact, Carson was the only one within sight-range, already having spotted her, his hands full of a manila folder and sheafs of papers, his labcoat swirling around his legs. "Elizabeth," the Scot greeted her with a raised, enquiring brow, turning from his previous course towards his sheltered office. "What can I do for yeh?" His question seemed innocent but there was knowingness in his blue eyes.

Elizabeth didn't call him on it; it was a dance the two of them stepped far too often, one in which she could distance herself from her subordinates – her _friends_ – if she needed to.

"How is he?" she asked quietly in return, jutting her chin in the direction of Peter's bed on the other side of the long infirmary as she approached, her arms already folded almost defensively across her stomach. This was her first chance to visit since she'd received word that Peter had woken up that morning and it seemed like half the city had managed to beat her to it.

At least, that's what she told herself; but sometime during the night something had occurred to her, something which made her chest clench with anguish and uncertainty, and she knew that a part of her had been avoiding the medical wing.

Carson followed her semi-anxious gaze and smiled understandingly, his face crinkling. "He's fine, lass. He's been pretty popular, but that'll die down once everyone's convinced he's not going anywhere. I'm going to keep him here for a few days to recuperate, but it wilna be too long before he can go back on light duty."

_Light duty._ The words made her tense, her stomach twisting. "Do you think…" The words were out before she knew she'd said them and she hesitated, arms folded across her red-shirted stomach. Her gaze turned in Carson's direction but she looked to the floor in thought, pulling in a short, sharp breath to continue before she lost her nerve. "Do you think it might be better if he went back to Earth?"

There; it was said, the one outcome she hadn't even thought of until it was over.

There was silence, and the brunette knew that the idea hadn't occurred to Carson either. When he spoke, it was slow, thoughtful, like he was putting his mind in order. "After what he's been though, I'm putting him down for some counselling with Doctor Heightmeyer – and recommending one or two sessions for the rest of us as well. But other than that… there's no medical reason why he should." he answered finally, quietly. "I guess that would be up to him, if that's what he wanted."

Elizabeth resisted the urge to sigh, not really reassured but not surprised. It was her responsibility, after all, to offer it to the scientist. "All of us just assumed that…" she trailed off and huffed a humourless chuckle. "We just assumed that he'd stay, but…"

Of course they had; Peter was a product of the original expedition, that first year without help from Earth, even bringing back emotional luggage that dated from the siege. The thought that he'd have fought so hard to get to Atlantis and then go all the way back to square one, to Earth…

"Ask him, lass. That's the only way t'know for sure."

Elizabeth nodded almost absently, then gifted him with a grateful smile and moved towards the back, around the gleaming steel equipment, leaving Carson to stroll towards his office.

"Peter?" The hazel-eyed diplomat approached the scientist's bed somewhat nervously and he glanced up from the laptop perched on the tray over his blanketed lap, looking surprised, then offering her a smile of his own in greeting. He already looked much better, she noted with a mixture of relief and satisfaction, albeit still pretty tired; but at least he'd managed a shave and his features were no longer so lined with strain. "How are you feeling?" she asked, drawing up the round stool that seemed to be perpetually waiting beside all of the cots.

_How many times have I said that since we've come here?_ She wondered idly.

"Fine, thank you. I was just beginning my report." Peter gestured at the glowing screen of the compact computer, his tone nearly light-hearted but still with a dark undercurrent that spoke of his trials. She could tell he felt it, almost saw him wince at it inwardly.

"Huh." Elizabeth tilted her head and gave him a small grin to make up for the grimness, forcing a hint of amusement into her expression. "I'm surprised Carson's letting you."

"Well, he did make sure there were no work-based distractions on the database first," Peter admitted wryly, clearly grateful for her levity as he shut the slim lid with a click and gave her his full attention, his brown eyes warm with welcome. "What can I do for you?"

_Typical._ He was still bedridden and his first thought was how he could help _her._ Not for the first time, she wondered how she'd managed to find such dedicated people.

Despite the fond exasperation, she felt that glow of comforting familiarity. Sergeant Grimault was good, but she still hadn't realized how much she'd missed Peter until he came back.

So the thought that he might actually leave…

For a moment, a selfish part of her was tempted not to offer him a trip back to Earth. They'd just got him back; whether he went back to Earth or had been killed, it still felt too much like she was losing him. Maybe not to the Wraith, but to something that had destroyed his drive, his sense of the mysterious. She'd lost too many people like that already, too many people who'd chosen to leave after that first year.

But the larger part of her insisted that she didn't really have anything to worry about.

She looked blindly down to the scarlet floor, biting her lip, body tense, and quashed the urge. "Peter…" she began, and found herself taking another breath, not looking up. "I know you've been through a lot…" She halted, wondering how to continued, but was saved the necessity for a moment.

"No more than anyone else here, I expect," was Peter's rather predictable answer into her hesitant silence, and Elizabeth's lips turned upwards slightly at the characteristic words, finding her resolve hardening. If anyone deserved the choice, it was him, who'd survived offworld, alone, for months.

"So it's only fair that I offer you the same thing I did everyone else." A pause, uncertainty, wondering. "The chance to go back to Earth." She met his eyes without lifting her head, looking at him through the thick wave of her dark fringe. With a slight, indrawn breath he sat back into his stack of pillows and regarded her seriously, tilting his head to the side in thought.

Elizabeth found herself praying silently, as she'd done for more than one of her people when she'd asked them, people who'd become more than strangers. For some of them she knew the question was unnecessary, others she just didn't know, but that hadn't changed her anxiety.

"I do appreciate the offer," the Brit said quietly. "But I'd prefer if you were stuck with me a while longer."

All the tension drained out of her like a sieve and Elizabeth found herself grinning, her leaderly mask dropping for a moment. "I think we can deal with that," she answered with a relieved laugh, finding herself thankful. One of her people had returned, for _good,_ not broken by Wraith or trauma.

She hoped.

Maybe she could help with that, at least. "So how far have you gotten?" she asked casually, cocking her head and nodding towards the laptop. John had mentioned how the scientist had sprung the surprise on them on the _Daedalus,_ about how he'd been in orbit at the same time as the battleship; then there was the abrupt news about Ford, the little nuances he hadn't mentioned.

She knew he would have to write them down in his report and that she could just wait until then, but if he was having trouble getting them down on paper, so to speak, maybe she could help remove the dam.

Plus, she had to admit, she was a little curious.

And besides, he still looked tired. She didn't want some report keeping him up when he should be sleeping, especially one that promised to be as draining as this one.

The Brit followed her gaze and patted the smooth grey surface companionably, mouth quirking slightly, but in what emotion Elizabeth couldn't tell. "Not far," he confessed. "It's… proving more difficult than I anticipated."

Elizabeth felt a pang, recognising the fleeting hollowness in his eyes; the same kind she seen in everyone else's after the siege, the same she still sometimes saw, that she knew she would continue seeing.

And that made her think about the battle, what he'd missed because of a quirk of fate, and wonder what might've been different if he'd been there. When she thought of the siege, one of the things she remember most aside from the price they'd paid was the utter determination of every single person to hold their position. They'd stood together and persevered.

How much more difficult had been for Peter, knowing he was alone?

"Did you ever feel like giving up?" she asked quietly before she'd fully considered it, but found that she didn't regret the question. She remembered that uncertainty, didn't want it to fester in someone else.

Somewhat to her surprise and much to her consternation he didn't look up at her, staring down at his hand on the smooth laptop. She couldn't think of a time that Peter wasn't willing to look someone in the eye.

She was about to retract her question, tell him it didn't matter, when he answered. "Sometimes," he admitted in a low voice, almost as though he felt guilty about it.

_Huh._ Despite herself, she felt curious. What could have driven someone to continue in such a hopeless situation? The red-clad diplomat shifted thoughtfully, sitting forward, and asked probingly, "Why didn't you?"

Surprising her a second time, Peter chuckled once, tilting his head slightly in a slightly rueful expression. "I always liked boxing. I did it in university, you know."

Elizabeth lifted an eyebrow in faint, if puzzled, amusement, the comment unexpected but bringing with it memories. "Yes, I remember what you did to Sergeant Bates," she said wryly, encouraging him to continue as he grinned briefly.

"A lot of the people I was matched against only cared about winning," he explained, looking somewhat distant, brow knit in remembrance. "But for me it was never about that, that wasn't the point. As long as you kept getting up, as long as you kept fighting, the other guy couldn't win. So when I was offworld, whenever I…" He stopped, jaw tightening for an instant, eyes shadowed for barely longer, and Elizabeth found herself holding her breath. "I just remembered that if I gave up… I'd be letting the Wraith win."

Elizabeth stared at him wordlessly, trying to sort out her sudden tumult of emotions. She found herself unsurprised by his words, and yet utterly… stunned, flabbergasted, by the feeling in them. If ever she needed proof that she had chosen good people, this was it. Halfway across the galaxy, cut off from his homeworld, alone, not knowing if his friends had survived or not, and Peter still managed to channel the same drive that they had felt during the siege. Still managed to fight as a resident of Atlantis. And somehow, that hit her harder than she expected.

The slender diplomat exhaled slowly and offered him a tiny, sincere smile. "Your post is waiting for you," she said with heartfelt warmth. "Whenever you're ready."

"Thank you," Peter smiled, eyes sparkling through the darkness, and Elizabeth stood up to let him get back to his report – or sleep, as the case may be.

"Although I should warn you," she added mischievously as she did so, "Sheppard and Zelenka are planning a party for you once you get out of the infirmary." _God knows we have little else to celebrate._

She grinned at the slight face he made, even as he laughed, and turned to work her way around the stool, across the scarlet floor.

_Wait._ She paused beside the thick, incised pillar shading his alcove and turned around, hands loose by her sides, and let her guard fall completely, showing something of the friend underneath and not the leader, reflecting with sincerity and affection in her hazel eyes. "Welcome back, Peter."

And then she left, letting the crystals dim in the alcove, feeling rested though she'd been awake since early morning. The world they lived in was dark, to be sure, but the light did shine through – even if they had to look for it, or even create it themselves.

- finis

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**A/N:** _So that's that. Kinda mushy ending, but hey (grins). Hope you enjoyed, and I look forward to seeing some of you in the 'Dawn' universe!  
_


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